studies in spirituality jesuits - archive
TRANSCRIPT
STUDIES IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF JESUITS
TON COLLEGE
OCT 29 1987
PROPERTY OF O'NEILL LIBRARY
Foundational Issues
in
Jesuit Spirituality
Roger Haight, SJ.
19/4 SEPTEMBER 1987
I
m
THE SEMINAR ON JESUIT SPIRITUALITY
A group of Jesuits appointed from their provinces in the United States.
The Seminar studies topics pertaining to the spiritual doctrine and
practice of Jesuits, especially American Jesuits, and communicates the
results to the members of the provinces. This is done in the spirit of
Vatican IPs recommendation to religious institutes to recapture the
original inspiration of their founders and to adapt it to the circumstances
of modern times. The Seminar welcomes reactions or comments in regard
to the material which it publishes.
The Seminar focuses its direct attention on the life and work of the
Jesuits of the United States. The issues treated may be common also to
Jesuits of other regions, to other priests, religious, laity, men and/or
women. Hence the Studies, while meant especially for American Jesuits, are
not exclusively for them. Others who may find them helpful are cordially
welcome to read them.
CURRENT MEMBERS OF THE SEMINAR
John A. Coleman, SJ., teaches Christian social ethics at the Jesuit School
of Theology at Berkeley.
Philip C. Fischer, SJ., is secretary of the Seminar and an editor at the
Institute of Jesuit Sources.
Roger D. Haight, SJ., teaches systematic theology at Regis College, the
Jesuit school of theology in Toronto.
Frank J. Houdek, SJ., teaches historical theology and spirituality at the
Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley.
Arthur F. McGovern, SJ., teaches philosophy and is director of the Honors
Program at the University of Detroit.
John J. Mueller, SJ., teaches systematic theology at St. Louis University.
John W. Padberg, S.J., is chairman of the Seminar, editor of Studies, and
director and editor at the Institute of Jesuit Sources.
Michael J. O Sullivan, SJ., teaches psychology at Loyola-Marymount
University.
Paul A. Soukup, SJ., teaches communications at Santa Clara University and
is director of studies for juniorate scholastics in the California
Province.
John M. Staudenmaier, SJ., teaches the history of technology at the
University of Detroit.
Copyright © 1987 and published by The Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality,
3700 West Pine Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63108 (Tel. 314-652-5737)
Roger Haight, S.J.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES
IN
JESUIT SPIRITUALITY
Studies
in the Spirituality of Jesuits
19/4
September 1987
For Your Information . . .
These remarks will continue to carry out the promise made in
earlier issues of Studies "to describe how the Seminar on Jesuit
Spirituality works and how it produces Studies" Previously I had
briefly told how members of the Seminar are chosen and what happens
at a typical Seminar weekend meeting. I would here like to tell
where papers for Studies come from, how we carry on a discussion
of them and how we decide which ones we shall publish.
Don't worry; we shall later report the results of our reader-
ship survey. (One out of every five recipients of Studies, chosen
completely at random, received a questionnaire.) The tabulations
and analysis have not yet been completed, but we hope for them in
time for the November issue.
Back to the papers. Most of the prospective issues of Studies
come, as might be expected, from members of the Seminar itself.
They arise from our ongoing discussions on Jesuit spirituality and
from particular interests and talents of Seminar members. Initially
a member proposes a topic. We talk at some length about it. If the
topic seems suitable, the member volunteers (or "is volunteered")
to write a first draft which goes to all of us for reading and
comments, a lot of them, and discussion. The author is always
present at and participates in the discussion. If the paper seems
to be going somewhere, the author receives every encouragement to
proceed with it.
The paper comes to all of us again as a revised version and
again comment and discussion ensue. This may happen several
times. (The record is probably four times; it took real courage
for the author to persevere with that topic but it finally did
result in an issue of Studies.)
When all of us are satisfied that we have thought and said
everything necessary and helpful, we ask the author to absent
himself while we vote on what to do with the paper. There are five
possibilities: simply to reject the paper; to affirm the topic and
to suggest another try at it with a different paper, but
with no commitment by the Seminar; to accept for publication on
condition of certain changes; to accept for publication with
suggestions for revision that the author is free to accept or not;
simply to accept for publication "as is" (with the usual editorial
work on consistency of style, proofreading, and so forth).
If a paper comes unsolicited from a non-Seminar-member, a
committee of three members gives it a preliminary screening. If
the committee recommends further consideration, all of us then
read the paper. If we agree that it should be further discussed,
it goes through all the steps described above, with the author
invited to be present and to participate in all the discussions of
his work.
Do we reject papers? Yes. Even when written, and perhaps
rewritten, by members? Yes. Does every Seminar member always agree
with and subscribe to everything in an accepted paper or in an
issue of Studies! No. Do you, our readers, always agree? I hope
not. The Seminar members have no monopoly on truth or insight. Wedo have*the desire to make available to the readers of Studies
essays which provoke thought, nourish the spiritual life, and
provide opportunities for the kind of discussion in which weourselves engage.
John W. Padberg, SJ.
Editor
Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
PART I. THE PROBLEM: THE NEED FOR NEWFOUNDATIONS 5
PART II. AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTION 12
One is what one does 13
Action has eternal value 14
The social structure of action 14
Action can participate in God's action 75
Three levels of intentional action 17
Possessive knowledge 19
PART III. IGNATIAN PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUALITY
IN THE LIGHT OF ACTION 21
Spirituality 21
The First Principle and Foundation 23
The Consideration of Sin 25
The Kingdom of God 28
Election and the will of God 32
The Discernment of Spirits 35
Finding God in action 39
CONCLUSION 43
APPENDIX: SOME ASPECTS OF BLONDEL'SANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTION 45
Action 46
Knowledge, being, and action 50
The relation between action and God 52
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES
IN JESUIT SPIRITUALITY
by
Roger Haight, S.J.*
INTRODUCTION
A Jesuit with whom I am acquainted made a thirty-day retreat
during the middle seventies. At that time the movement of historical
research into the sources of Jesuit spirituality was underway and
bearing fruit. Jesuits were beginning to understand both the Consti-
tutions and the Exercises in their context; we began to distinguish
the initial intention and genuine charism of Ignatius as distinct
from both his predecessors and the layers of tradition that had been
added to it and sometimes distorted it. The original experience,
language, directives, and intentions of Ignatius in fashioning the
Exercises controlled the imagination of directors of retreats much
more than in the past. Moreover, some retreat directors had also
internalized basic principles of modern exegesis, so that their inter-
pretation of Scripture was informed by the biblical theology of the
synoptic writers or the Johannine community. It should have made for
a stimulating retreat. But when asked whether the retreat had been a
profitable experience, the man in question was ambivalent. "I'm not
sure," he said. "I feel like I was exposed to a very solid sixteenth-
century spirituality, coupled with first-century theology. It was
interesting, but not very helpful for my life today."
Author's address: 15 St. Mary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4Y 2R5.
2 HAIGHT
The problem is a familiar one, and everyone knows its terms.1
Born in the fifteenth century, Ignatius, however revolutionary he be-
came, was a medieval person." Because of the differences between
his worldview and ours, we must adapt his values and intentions into
our own cultural context. This requires interpretation, the intention
of which is not to change the fundamental principles and values of the
founder, but precisely to preserve them by adjusting them to new sup-
positions and making them operative in a new situation. The process of
interpretation, however, is fraught with difficulties. One cannot not
interpret, because traditional words and phrases take on new ambiguous
meanings; yet no mechanical method exists to ensure agreement that a
particular reinterpretation is faithful. Moreover, no single
reinterpretation by itself can claim to be final. For the point in
time that marks the beginning of Jesuit spirituality must continually
open up to different temporal periods and distinct cultural situations
at any given time. Like different Christian communities appealing to
the same New Testament, interpretations of Ignatian spirituality
cannot not be pluralistic.3
What follows is an essay at interpretation. It seeks to incul-
turate certain Ignatian principles and axioms, especially as they
appear in the Exercises, into a modern philosophical and theological
framework. As resources I shall bring to bear a philosophy of action,
current theological insight, and an appeal to common experience today.
The essay deals primarily with Ignatian spirituality, but insofar as
the Exercises nurture this spirituality, I will use key considera-
See Avery Dulles, "The Contemporary Relevance of the Ignatian Vision/
Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits, 4/4 (October 1972), 145-154.
Ignatius was an innovator, and many of his principles from the Exercises
and the Constitutions seem perennial if not modern. But he was not as
innovative as the Reformers of the same century. And when we look back to the
sixteenth century from our side of the great divide of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment and its nineteenth- and twentieth-century aftermath, the
sixteenth century including the Reformers appears much more continuous with
the middle and late medieval period than is frequently imagined. Ignatius was
certainly closer to Francis, Dominic, Aquinas, the Nominalists, and A Kempis
than to us today.
Stephen Sykes, The Identity of Christianity: Theologians and the Essence
of Christianity from Schleicrmacher to Earth (London: SPCK, 1984), pp. 11-34.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 3
tions from them to set up the areas for reinterpretation. These are
the First Principle and Foundation, Sin, the Kingdom of Christ, the
Election, the Discernment of Spirits, and the Contemplation to Attain
the Love of God. Taken together these considerations may be looked
upon as a kind of synopsis of the Christian spiritual life. They
represent the purpose of existence, sin, salvation, and intentional
committed life in the Spirit in imitation of Christ. On the whole,
then, I wish not to probe this or that element in Ignatian spiritual-
ity, but to offer a foundational interpretation of the very meaning
of Christian existence in Ignatian terms.
Two general issues lie in the background of this essay as a kind
of foil, and it may be helpful to bring them forward at the outset. In
moving to anthropology as a lever for interpretation, I want to tran-
scend a therapeutic interpretation of spirituality generally and
Ignatian spirituality in particular. By a therapeutic interpretation
I mean one which heavily depends on psychology and seeks in one way
or another to cure. Such Christian reflection presupposes that the
subject is sick, or in pain, or somehow interiorly torn and suffering.
Spiritual resources are thus brought to bear upon the disintegration
to help reestablish health, integration, and wholeness. It is true
that as long as he remains "sick," and unless some sort of strength
is restored, a person cannot be expected to address reality in a
realistic way. But in contrast to a prevailing therapeutic tendency
today, the reflections here begin on the other side of therapy. They
presuppose health and strength. I do not by this call into question
the value of therapeutic spirituality when therapy is needed; nor
should these remarks impugn the contribution of psychology to an
understanding of human existence itself. But a psychological inter-
pretation of spirituality that remains exclusively therapeutic tends
to turn the Christian vision of human life back in upon the human
person in a private individualistic way. It is not necessary to expand
this analysis in considerations of how holiness has been reduced to
"wholeness" and the development of my personality. Psychological an-
thropocentrism gradually undermines the transcendence of God's will
4 HAIGHT
by tending to reduce it to the individual's personal needs.4 All of
this seems alien to the testimony of Scripture which maintains that
God's will is precisely not our will.
Secondly, the linkage between faith and a concern for social
justice also lies in the background of this essay. It is written from
the broad perspective of a liberation theology whose language has
spread far beyond Latin America. This binding of our Christian faith
in God with a concern for society, especially with a concern for
praxis or action in the world, has still not found a proper apology
on the level of foundational thinking. The telling point in this
issue lies in spirituality. Until one can establish a viewpoint in
spirituality where these two concerns can be seen to coincide, the
theological language of faith's intrinsic concern for social justice
will never be persuasive. I do not claim to succeed here, but only to
set up a framework for further discussion.
It must be obvious that such an ambitious project can only be
accomplished in a short space in the most schematic and foundational
way. I am concerned here with basic principles. I will begin by posing
the problems which some Ignatian formulae from the Exercises run up
against today. Then, in the second part of the essay I introduce ele-
ments of an anthropology of action that will be helpful in resolving
the problem areas. This anthropology is based on an interpretation of
the early thought of Maurice Blondel. Because of the complexity of his
categories, however, I have recast some of Blondel's key distinctions
descriptively and presented a fuller interpretation more faithful to
his langauge in an appendix. The third and final part of the essay
returns to the issues that were raised in Part I and offers an
interpretation of how they might be reconceived in the light of the
theoretical framework of Part II.
James Gustafson, by assuming a rigorously theocentric point of view in
his Ethics from a Theocentric Perspecth'e: I. TJteology and Ethics (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1981), has unmasked this "triumph of the
therapeutic" in Christian spirituality. Sec esp. pp. 19-20.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES
PART I. THE PROBLEM: THE NEED FOR NEW FOUNDATIONS
While Ignatius was alive the Council of Trent never considered a
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. No synod of
bishops declared that a concern for social justice is a constitutive
dimension of the gospel. Jesuits in the sixteenth century never for-
mulated their mission as "the service of faith, of which the promotion
of justice is an absolute requirement."5 Ignatius did not live in a
period that viewed the reality of the universe and our world in an
evolutionary framework. Ignatius did not have a post-Enlightenment
historical consciousness that has become aware of the vast differences
between the conditions, ideas, and values of groups of peoples across
earthly time and space. Ignatius did not experience pluralism the way
we do today. As confusing as it inevitably must be, we still have to
admit that pluralism remains not only necessary but also a value.
Reality confronts us as so deeply rich and mysterious that no one way
of conceiving it suffices. In a strange way Ignatius, along with the
philosophy and theology of his time, knew far more than we do today.
Ironically, the knowledge explosion which expands by geometrical
progression has rendered us more humble and modest. His world was
simpler, his suppositions more secure. Those suppositions, those
basic preconceptions and values, enter into, color, and determine
everything he says. We cannot accept at face value even his most
obvious statements of principle. Let us examine some of them.6
32nd General Congregation, par. 48.
Let me clarify the method by which I am raising these issues. First, I
am not an historian of the Exercises and have not engaged in historical source
criticism or exegesis of Ignatian texts. The logic of these questions,
therefore, rests on the assumption that as a sixteenth-century figure Ignatius
did not have and could not have had a twentieth-century horizon of
consciousness. Secondly, however, all Jesuits today in some measure have
internalized the Exercises and drawn from them insight and solution to their
own and their retreatants' current questions. In so doing we are implicitly
reinterpreting Ignatius for our own time. One cannot avoid reading twentieth-
century meaning into sixteenth-century texts. Thus the method here consists in
highlighting the distance between ourselves and Ignatius in order to create
the freedom to make the reappropriation consciously and explicitly. At some
6 HAIGHT
One of the most solid pillars supporting the Spiritual Exercises
is the "First Principle and Foundation: The human person is created to
praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save
his or her soul."7 At first glance, the formula is so basic that it
appears to be beyond reproach. But a closer analysis betrays sup-
positions not universally accepted today. The formula appears in-
dividualistic; it can be construed to view each individual discretely
as having the task of saving his or her soul. Is that why we were
created? The means by which we are to save our soul is by praising,
reverencing, and serving God, so that these activities become the
very reason for our existing in this world. Is this the way we as
Christians should conceive our task in the world today? More impor-
tantly, one might question the purely eschatological notion of salva-
tion implied in the formula. Salvation means final salvation; it
refers to the salvation that awaits us at the end of life. The medita-
tions during the First Week depict salvation as union with God for
eternity in opposition to damnation in hell. The First Principle and
Foundation sets the ultimate stakes for the Spiritual Exercises:
eternal life with God or eternal damnation for me as an individual.
But today more and more people want to know about this life and the
meaning that Christian salvation has in and for life in this world
here and now. Ignatius understood salvation in too limited a framework
for our world today.
Having raised these questions, and before continuing with more
problems with other principles, let me clarify the point of view from
which they come. I am assuming that the people making the Exercises
today are Christians, perhaps, like Jesuits, educated Christians. If
such persons are attuned to our culture and contemporary theology in
a more or less critical way, they may have no sympathy whatever for
Ignatius's formulation of the First Principle and Foundation. Since
points this distance may be overdrawn. But appreciation of the necessity and
validity of the reinterpretation rests on a sympathetic entertainment of a
really new cultural sensibility and set of questions.
7Tfte Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans, by Louis J. Puhl
(Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1951), 23. The reference is to the nowstandard paragraph numbers of the Exercises.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 7
they have faith in a God revealed through Jesus, they may not worry
excessively about their final salvation; in fact, they may rest in
the hope for the salvation of all people despite their sin. They
simply do not live in any urgent personal dilemma between the paths
to heaven and hell. Their main concern presupposes and transcends the
personal eschatological issue. Their question about salvation narrows
in on its bearing on life in our world and society today. Having made
a commitment to God in faith, they ask what this entails for the
exercise of their freedom within this world. They seek no therapy.
They feel no anguish, are not torn apart by guilt or rent by personal
crisis; they are healthy. They seek light for further vision and
meaning for deeper commitment in the active lives they now lead. They
do not experience any exigency to spend their day in direct praise,
reverence, and service of God; they may feel that God put them in the
world for something more important in God's eyes than that; they want
to know what God wants them to do with their lives in such a way that
they contribute to other people, society, and the world.
But certainly all the people who make the Exercises are not like
this. Indeed, many who approach the Exercises may be just like the
neoconvert Ignatius; and the First Principle and Foundation as he
articulates it may hit exactly home. Ignatius's formula does have a
point, and it bears a universal relevance; we cannot escape the ques-
tion of our personal eschatological destiny. Or they may be experien-
cing a fundamental spiritual crisis and need healing. In that case
spiritual therapy is in order. If any principle underlying the Exer-
cises is universal, it is the demand that they should be adapted to
their audience. Thus I wish to underline clearly that the questions
and problems raised here may not be universal in their applicability
to individuals any more than the reinterpretation that tries to meet
them. Once and for all, then, the point of departure for these reflec-
tions lies on the other side of therapy. It presupposes a healthy and
integrated faith and responds to the question of the Christian mean-
ing of action in the world.
A second problem with the Spiritual Exercises given in our cul-
ture becomes manifest in the person who does not experience with
anxiety his or her sin. The theme of the First Week, one on which
8 HAIGHT
Ignatius dwells with almost excruciating intensity, unfolds in a
dialectic between, on one hand, a sense of horror, fear, and confusion
at my personal sin and, on the other hand, God's boundless love and
mercy and God's forgiveness and acceptance of me the sinner. The
dialectic is such that the opposing realizations feed each other; the
more the intensity, the more the profit. This dynamic approaches the
core of Luther's interpretation of Paul, and it is one of the most
profound in the history of Christian theology. But it is also simply
true that many people today do not live in this tension, so that,
when they approach this First Week, the only confusion they feel is
the lack of shame and confusion over their personal sin. One might
challenge this attitude with the charge that "That's the sin! "-the
lack of a sense of the intrinsic egoism that marks us all and the
easy feeling that "You're OK, and I'm OK, and God's OK." But often
those who lack feelings of personal shame may have a deeply disorient-
ing sense of original sin, a sin of the world, and a social sin from
which they cannot escape. The world of many people today is not a
nice place in which to live, and they are part of it. This sin in the
way that it is analyzed by current theology escapes the individualism
of a medieval Ignatius.
Third, the meditation the Kingdom of Christ is another pivotal
Ignatian consideration, introducing as it does consideration of the
life of the Person who focuses Christian faith in God and is the
living symbol revealing the nature of God.8 Once again, salvation
lies at the bottom of this consideration, and it becomes evident that
Ignatius had a restricted view of the extent of that salvation. The
Council of Florence had made clear that salvation was somewhat rare
since it was reserved to those in the Roman Church. Recall the themes
of militancy in which the meditation is cast; they hark back to the
crusades and reflect the enormous struggle in which the nascent Jesuit
order would take the lead, namely, to beat back the inroads of the
heretics of the Reformation and extend Christian faith to the vast
new worlds of the infidel.
8Exercises, 91-100.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 9
I put it this way to underline the degree that the underlying
vision clashes with current sensibility in several crucial ways.
Current christology has taken an historical turn; it begins with and
focuses on the historical Jesus. The divine must be found within the
life and preaching of this man. But Jesus did not preach himself as
king and most probably explicitly rejected the idea. Jesus preached
the kingdom of God, and that kingdom, according to Vatican II and
current theology, extends beyond the Christian sphere. We live in the
age of an ecumenical movement, where any projected unity will include
recognition of the values underlying the Reform; we live in a mis-
sionary age in which dialogue with other religions presupposes that
we take them seriously as God-given and God-willed vehicles of salva-
tion. The theme of urgency and even militancy in mission carries a
value in the Christian life, and particularly in Jesuit life, but it
needs a new focus than the one the sixteenth-century Ignatius gave it.
Fourth, an election about how to lead one's life stands at the
center of the Spiritual Exercises.9 According to the interpretation of
Fessard and Pousset, the whole logic of the Exercises turns on this
point.10 The logic concerns the question of being or nonbeing. In the
election of a way of life that renounces the nonbeing of contingency
and sin and chooses life in God, a person seals his or her destiny in
Absolute Being; in the remaining considerations of the passion, death,
and resurrection of Jesus, one confirms the initial decision made in
a moment with a dynamic way of life that leads through death to new
life. That logic seems indisputably valid, but when one considers the
subject matter of the election in specific terms, one also raises the
question of the meaning of the will of God for the individual. Ig-
natius does not directly say that God has a special will for each
individual because he addresses choices in life "as far as depends on
us." But the language of "a vocation from God" and God moving the
will suggests a notion of providence in which God exercises absolute
9Exercises, 169-189.
Edouard Pousset, Life in Faith and Freedom: An Essay Presenting Gaston
Fessards Analysis of the Dialectic of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius,
trans, and ed. by Eugene L. Donahue (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit
Sources, 1980), pp. 20-28.
10 HAIGHT
oversight over history and has an intention for each individual in
it. Does God have a specific will or plan for my individual life?
Some contemporary process theology, as well as theologies of
providence and history, call into question the idea of God having a
specific will for the future of this world in this world, and conse-
quently a will for each individual in it. A new concern for the value
of human freedom and its genuine creativity lends reason to these
conceptions. The power of Ignatius's concern seems perennial; it
appeals to a universal human desire that one's individual life conform
with ultimate and transcendent truth. But our modern sensibilities
require more than an adjustment of language in the question of seeking
God's will. Reinterpretation at this point will have a subtle but
real impact on the general rhetoric of Jesuits, especially in our
exercise of authority. We should be clear about whose will we are
conveying or obeying, and how it is known.
Fifth, somewhat related to the issue of God's will lies the
question of the process of discerning the spirits.11 What worldview
and epistemology underlie the discernment of spirits? By what mech-
anism should one sort out a proper course of action? Roland Bainton
offers the following reflection about Luther that can equally be
applied to Ignatius.12 We might be tempted to think that, in com-
parison with our own time in which God appears absent or at least
distant from social affairs, the late medieval period was blessed by
the nearness of God and God's myriad interventions into one's life.
Not so. For Luther and Ignatius believed in the spirits, angels and
demons; they were real and always at hand. And the terrifying fact
was that the evil spirits employed the tactic of deceit; the angel of
darkness always posed as the angel of light. The only way to win in
this world bordering on the superstitious involved complex rules and
countertactics to meet the enemy. Today, of course, we psychologize
the demons, but that may not be enough for modern retreatants. They
may be confused by the language and elaborate rules and put off by
Exercises, 313-336.
Roland Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Nashville/New
York: Abingdon Press, 1950), pp. 25-28.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 11
the introspection. Much more profoundly, they may not accept the
lingering supposition that the Holy Spirit directs human life or that
human beings could know it if the Spirit did.
Sixth and last, I wish to point to some issues implicit in the
Contemplation to Attain the Love of God,13 such as the Ignatian axiom
of finding God in all things and the aphorism in actione contemplati-
vz/5.14 The early Society was torn over the issue of the relation
between prayer and action, especially in terms of the amount of time
to be accorded to formal prayer. Ignatius appears as an innovator
here when we compare the Society he founded with other religious
orders. And the genius that allowed for his new departures comes to
light in the virtualities of such ideas as the use of creatures ac-
cording to God's appointed ends,15 finding God in creatures, and
especially the simple yet paradoxical formula of a contemplative in
action. Yet these notions will never completely resolve the problem
of a necessary and inner tension between these two dimensions of
Christian and Jesuit life. In these latest years the only priority
that Jesuit leadership has stressed more forcefully than a concern
for justice is renewal in a life of prayer. Is there a way of
conceiving these two areas of spiritual life as not simply on the
same level and in dialectical tension which each other? When viewed
on the same level they sustain and increase each other by their mutual
demands, but also produce at times tensions of anxiety and guilt. Can
their relation be clarified? It may be that the key here lies in the
axiom of Ignatius taken from the gospels, one which underlies a great
deal of the current theology of our response to God, namely, "that
love ought to manifest itself in deeds rather than in words."16
At this point let me summarize this initial stage of the discus-
sion. I have tried to show that the obvious need to adjust the Exer-
13Exercises, 230-237.
This axiom is the main theme of the study of Joseph F. Conwell, Con-
templation in Action: A Study in Ignatian Prayer (Spokane, WA: Gonzaga Univer-
sity, 1957).
Exercises, 23.
Exercises, 230.
12 HAIGHT
cises and Jesuit spirituality to our contemporary situation is no
surface issue; it reaches down to foundations. This can be seen in
six problematic areas in the Exercises which may be considered fun-
damental: the notion of personal and predominantly eschatological
salvation that constitutes their point of departure and underlies the
whole, the individualistic conception of sin, the narrow breadth of
salvation implicit in the historically unauthentic idea that Jesus
was a king, the questionable notion that God has a specific
providential will for each individual life, the supernaturalism
implied in the discernment of spirits, and the perennial tension
between prayer and action in the Christian life. These are I believe
crucial issues for Jesuit spirituality in our world today. I put them
forward on the basis of a conviction that Jesuit sources contain
powerful resources for a spirituality in our day. The objections
raised against the letter of the Exercises touch not the substance of
Ignatian spirituality but the sixteenth-century form of its
presentation. The point of this questioning, then, is not to undermine
Jesuit principles and axioms, but to reinterpret them anew for our
age. But since the questions raised here are foundational, one needs
to bring to bear a consistent modern anthropological framework.
PART II. AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTION
In this section I shall describe some elements of an under-
standing of human existence in terms of a philosophy of action. This
anthropology will then serve as a framework for reinterpreting the
critical areas of Ignatian spirituality that have just been consid-
ered. This anthropological interlude, therefore, grounds the under-
standing of the dynamics of Ignatian spirituality put forward in Part
III. These reflections are inspired by Maurice Blondel, and a fuller
account of his thought appears in the Appendix. I am not aiming at
systematic coherence in this presentation. I have simply chosen those
distinctions which will become operative in adjusting the sixteenth-
century Ignatian language of spirituality to our current context, and
I present them in an order that corresponds to those points of the
Exercises under consideration.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 13
As a point of departure let me clarify the central category of
the discussion, namely, action. Action is used analogously, and this
means that in different contexts it has a meaning that is partly
similar and partly different. For example, in its deepest sense,
action refers to human existence itself. To say that the human person
is action highlights the dynamic quality of human existence. At this
deep level too the term includes all dimensions of human life. Knowing
is action. Human affectivity and feeling insofar as they are responses
are action. But action may also refer to concrete behaviors. Doing is
action, so that action may be used to designate specific concrete
actions that people perform.
It should be clear from the beginning then that the discussion of
action that follows may not be construed in any reductionist way.
Action is never mere doing. At bottom this discussion of action deals
with human existence itself in its most general and at the same time
most concrete sense. Action embraces within a dynamic realism every
aspect of concrete human life. Action is the name of our existence as
well as what we do.
One is what one does
From this rich meaning of action, it follows that one is what one
does. If action refers to dynamic existence itself, what is the self
other than a person's action? Human action is free. Thus by our
action, in the sense of the decisions we make and the actions we
perform, we also fashion ourselves to be this or that. Human beings
constitute themselves by action. On a practical level, we form basic
attitudes through action; ideas emerge out of responsive action; we
focus our values through action; we fashion our concrete desires in
action; through action we forge who we are in relation to the reality
to which we respond. Beneath what we think we are and beyond who we
say we are, who we really are is revealed in action because it is
constituted by our action. We are what we do. Action then represents
the intentional and dynamic process by which human beings constitute
themselves as unique persons. This aspect of action will be relevant
to our conception of spirituality.
14 HAIGHT
Action has eternal value
Action has an eternal value. This thesis affirms several aspects
of the value of human action. First of all, once posited, action
exists and cannot not have existed. It has the ontic reality and
value that pertains to being itself. Secondly, actions continue in
their effects. They cannot be called back, but continue indefinitely
through unknown chains of causality to influence the world irrever-
sibly. Our action perdures as long as time itself. But, thirdly,
human action has a certain eternal value that transcends time. This
affirmation of faith stands against the view that finite reality is
not really real because God as infinite reality already contains and
possesses all that really is within God's own self. Such a view really
negates the ultimate reality of action because the infinite immensity
of God's being swallows up limited and finite human action.
In reaction to this view of things, the thesis that human action
has an eternal value begins with a conviction of faith that God crea-
ted human freedom for a purpose. Human action is in some measure
free with a freedom that transcends antecedent causes and allows it
to be creative. Human action out of itself creates novelty in the
world; it fashions new forms and structures of being. These products
of human action can have ultimate eternal value through the power of
the God who creates and sustains human action. God the bestower of
creative freedom must be seen as the guarantor of its eternal value.
The logic of this faith can be demonstrated negatively. Were this not
the case, neither could one affirm the ultimate worth of human life
in this world. The ultimate value of human action, therefore, can be
inferred as implied in faith in God the creator. This quality of
human action will have a bearing on our construal of the First
Principle and Foundation of the Exercises.
The social structure of action
Up to this point I have been addressing human action from a
personalist point of view. I have considered action as emerging from
the human person and entering the world. I now wish to shift to a
perspective that allows reflection on human action from the perspec-
tive of the world and society.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 15
The human person and his or her action can never be understood
adequately as an isolated phenomenon. Personal human action forms
part of the world and thus always interacts with the world. What ap-
pears as autonomous action from a personalist point of view appears as
response from the broader perspective of the world and society. The
human person who is a free initiator of action is also fashioned by
the world and by society. As long as one holds firmly to the auton-
omous value of personal human freedom, one cannot exaggerate the
determining influence of the world on human action. We are also genu-
inely constituted by the world and society. The way the objective
social institution of language shapes our power even to think demon-
strates the degree of influence which the objective social world
exerts upon individual action.
Action then may also be seen as that which constitutes society;
action is the bond that holds social reality together. But in this
case action refers to patterned behavior, routine actions that have
been developed over the years to form objective social structures
into which personal human action is absorbed. These social structures
of action range from the most basic and universal to the most
temporary and intentional. Ideas and values lie embedded in human
patterns of speech and they are learned and internalized; work in a
corporation participates in organic patterned behavior to produce
goods and generate the profit on which its very existence depends. In
both cases structured social action fashions the person whose action
fits into these institutions, even as personally initiated action
helps to fashion the social world in which it participates. These
aspects of human action will expand our notion of sin.
Action can participate in God's action
Human action not only coacts in and with the world and society;
it may also participate in the action of God in the world. Humanaction is not absolutely autonomous because the infinite power of
God's creating grounds and sustains the very existence of action
itself. But I would like to reflect beyond the level of creation on
the significance of the doctrine of cooperative grace that has marked
16 HAIGHT
the theological tradition from Augustine through Aquinas and has been
so influential in Roman Catholic spirituality.
The doctrine of original sin symbolizes our experience that human
existence is intrinsically infected with a tendency to sin. One may
understand this sin as at least an eradicable egocentrism that entraps
freedom within itself so that the expansive reaching out of action
into the world always includes at the same time an effort to draw the
world into the self for the increment of its own being. A doctrine of
cooperative grace makes sense only in the light of this doctrine of
sin. In the Christian view, if sin so pervades human action, the only
way to account for genuine love in the world lies in the power of a
God who is love at work within human action itself. The doctrine of
cooperative grace depicts God's Spirit, that is, God as personally
present and immanent to God's creatures, at work drawing human freedom
out of itself and into creative loving relationships in the world.
This action of God within, as Karl Rahner has shown, need not be
explicitly conscious. Nor need we think that it is rare. But at the
same time neither does Christian theology merely postulate this idea
of God's power of love at work within us. It does not lie beyond all
experience. The work of God's Spirit in human life can be experienced
indirectly. This experience comes to expression in exclamations such
as Paul's when he writes that his action for the good is due not to
himself but the grace of Christ within him (Gal 2:20; Rm 7:13 - 8:17).
In this view, then, human action may be action that cooperates
with God's action in the world. Or viewing the same coaction from the
opposite direction, God may be considered as working in the world
within and through human action. Creative loving action, action that
intends and builds positive value in the world, may thus be called
theandric action or theergy, action that participates in God's saving
power in the world. In this action human existence itself becomes
united with God. This vision of human action could have a determining
influence on our conception of Jesus' central message of the kingdom
of God and our role in it.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 17
Three levels of intentional action
Human action involves the will, and willing presupposes some form
of knowledge. When I call human action intentional, I am simply under-
lining the fact that human beings do not act blindly. Reflective
awareness undergirds the will, and human action always flows in some
measure from a conscious human intention. At this point I want to
distinguish three levels at which the will can be seen as structuring
human action.
The most obvious level of the operation of the will in human
action occurs in human choice. In the clearest case, this level of
willing involves a decision directed towards a specific object. In
this exercise of free will, human action becomes determined by a
concrete object or the specific direction that it chooses. Human life
may be seen as made up of a whole series of such concrete choices.
These encompass the routine choices of an ordinary day. They also
include the momentous decisions that will shape the future sig-
nificantly. Actually every decision shapes our future and the future
of the world. But the point here is that the exercise of free choice
constitutes merely one level of the intentional activity of human
action.
A deeper level of willed action can be discovered beneath all the
human choices that make up human life. I call this level of the will
"the dynamic of willing itself." This dynamic of willing itself really
describes the expansive character of action in its most fundamental
sense. In response to the question of why human beings will anything
at all, why they necessarily act, one finds a dynamism beneath every
specific action of the will that inevitably goes out of and beyond the
self. Aquinas recognized this dynamic quality of human action as a
necessary reaching out that ultimately has as its implicit object "the
good" or being itself. This corresponds to the restlessness that
Augustine spoke of and which will not be quieted or content with any
finite object. This dynamic of willing itself forms a universal drive
that is constitutive of human existence itself. Unlike human choice
the intentional quality of this will does not lie in our control. The
intentionality at this level is a determinism. All human beings are
constituted by a dynamism with a necessary logic, namely, an expansive
18 HAIGHT
and outgoing willing and acting that tends towards its implicit goal,
whether reflectively known or not, namely, absolute being itself.
Yet another level or dimension of the human will has been called
"a fundamental option." Many are familiar with this distinction from
their study of moral philosophy or theology. This fundamental option
should not be confused with the deepest law of the will, the dynamic
of willing itself. The fundamental option of a person is determined by
the whole series of specific choices that make up one's life up to and
at any given point. A fundamental option in this understanding is not
any single choice, nor could it be. Conscious freedom never has the
ability to encompass totally and dispose of the self in a moment. To
think that one can fails to appreciate both the finite historical
nature of the person and its radical depth and mystery. It was said
earlier that we constituted ourselves by our action. Here we see
another aspect of this self-constitution. A person's concrete choices
taken as a whole fashion and fix at any given moment his or her fun-
damental option. This fundamental option is like the center of gravity
which defines the actual direction which a person's life has taken.
It may be hidden from the self, but it can be ferreted out by an
examination of the choices that in fact have governed one's life.
These three levels of intentional action interrelate with each
other. The fundamental law of dynamic expansive action, that is, the
dynamic of willing itself, becomes concrete in an actual life of spe-
cific choices and decisions. Ideally these concrete choices should be
directed towards the goal of the dynamic of willing itself. From a
point of view of sheer coherence, there should be a correspondence
between one's fundamental option and the dynamic of willing itself.
Without such a correspondence, a radical division and conflict would
rule a person's life. The self as constituted by one's fundamental
option would be at odds with the purpose of human existence and the
dynamic of willing itself. These distinctions concerning the inner
structure of human action, then, will be very helpful for understand-
ing what is going on in an election and the discernment of the spir-
its.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 19
Possessive knowledge
Action, finally, mediates possessive knowledge. This last thesis
concerning action has to do with the quality of knowledge that action
generates, Knowledge, conscious awareness of reality, may exist at
many different levels, from vaguely conscious feelings to the vivid
presence provided by sight. Moreover knowledge may exist in a variety
of differentiated forms, from poetic intuition to the abstract clarity
of mathematical definition. Possessive knowledge mediated by action
does not relate to an increment of awareness of reality, but precisely
to possession of it. Action negotiates a kind of knowing that, as it
were, internalizes through the body of one's action that which is
known. Action causes and results in a form of possession of the real-
ity that is known. The knower and the known become wedded in action;
action overcomes the separation and unites the knower with the known.
The engagement of action allows one to know something from the inside,
to possess it and be possessed by it. Action thus becomes as it were
the reality principle that binds the known to the knower, who can
otherwise still remain at a distance from the object of his or her
knowledge. The student of war does not know it in the same way as the
soldier, whether private or general. The veterans of Viet Nam possess
and are possessed by the reality of war. This category of the posses-
sive knowledge mediated by action has everything to do with the union
with God that Ignatius aims at in the exercise of the Contemplation
for Obtaining Divine Love.
As a conclusion to this section and before moving to an analysis
of the Ignatian spirituality that is portrayed in the Exercises, let
me summarize the anthropology of action that will serve as a basis for
reinterpretation. Action offers a viewpoint for understanding
ourselves and human existence itself in a dynamic, existential, and
realistic way. Because of its depth and richness on the one hand, and
its sheer practicality on the other, it binds together a metaphysical
vision of human reality and reflections on concrete behavior in an
integrated and coherent way. From a personal point of view, human
beings are centers of action and any given person is what he or she
does. Secondly, in an evolutionary and historical world the freedom
that intrinsically constitutes action appears as creative. We help
20 HAIGHT
fashion the world. This necessarily entails responsibility, a respon-
sibility in and for the world that cannot be escaped. In the light of
the doctrine of an evolutionary creation, one must ask about the
permanent value and the proper use of one's free action. If action
here and now has an eternal value, precisely because of final salva-
tion, then this salvation reorients the purpose of human freedom and
action back towards construction in the world.
Thirdly, when action reaches out into the world, it appears as
interaction or coaction with the world and others in objective socie-
ty. The horizon of action thus expands so that human action, especial-
ly in its patterned and socially constructed institutions, reappears
as the very stuff of personal existence and action. In a dialogic
relationship, then, personal human action fashions society even as it
is determined by the world and society. Purely individual action
simply does not exist. Fourthly, within a religious framework and the
tradition of the theology of cooperative grace, human action does not
appear absolutely autonomous. Behavior that overcomes the inherent
tendency of human action to be incurvata in se cooperates with God's
own initiative or action in history.
Fifthly, returning to the personalist perspective, human action
insofar as it is intentional is highly complex. But the distinctions
between the underlying dynamic of human willing itself, basic human
choices of specific objects, and the fundamental option that is fash-
ioned in those very choices help to sort out the logic and goal of the
human phenomenon. This in turn provides a framework for understanding
the process of decision making. And sixthly, decision and action that
cooperate with God's intention and action in the world bind a person
in a symbiotic and possessive relationship with God.
These distinctions from a philosophy of action will have sig-
nificant consequences in the reinterpretation of spirituality gener-
ally and in particular Ignatius's first principle and his notions of
sin, the kingdom of God, the election, the discernment of spirits,
and finding God in all things.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 21
PART III. IGNATIAN PRINCIPLES OF SPIRITUALITY
IN THE LIGHT OF ACTION
In this third part I wish to take up again the key areas of
Jesuit spirituality illustrated by the Exercises that were mentioned
in the first part of this essay and which may encounter resistance in
some people because they live in a different world than that of Ig-
natius. The reinterpretation in each case will be positive and con-
structive and will try to preserve not what was consciously in Ig-
natius's mind, but the question behind each meditation and how its
logic might be reappropriated today. In each case the formulation
will be fashioned in a language of a philosophy and theology of ac-
tion. I shall begin with a general characterization of spirituality
as it appears in this framework.
Spirituality
In Part II it was said that one is what one does. By action the
human person constitutes himself or herself. From this it can be shown
that, at bottom, the term spirituality refers to the way a person
leads his or her life. The term spirituality is properly Christian.
But rather than view that to which it refers as limited to Chris-
tians, it is reasonable to think that every human being has a spirit-
uality. All human beings lead their lives in a certain way. The con-
crete way of life of individuals and groups make up their spiritu-
ality. This conception of things prevents from the outset every notion
of spirituality that cuts it off from life in the world.
This view of spirituality reaches more deeply than the question
of "lifestyle." Since human existence is intentional and willed ac-
tion, a spirituality reaches below the surface of this or that pattern
of action to the fundamental option of a person. The multiple specific
actions of a person fix and define the deepest commitment of that
person's will, and ultimately of his or her being. One fashions the
being of the self through action. In order to assign spirituality the
22 HAIGHT
profound significance it should have in the whole of life, there is
no better way than to conceive it as embodied in human action itself.
The term spirituality can be understood on at least two distinct
levels, the one existential and the other reflective and explicitly
conscious. On the first and deepest level of action, spirituality is
constituted by the conscious decisions and actions that make the
person to be who he or she is; spirituality is the continuous line of
action that fashions a person's identity. On the second reflective
level, spirituality refers to a theory or theoretical vision of human
life in terms of the ideas, ideals, and ultimate values that should
shape it. These two levels constantly interact in the thinking person.
For example, in Christian spirituality one has a vision of God and
reality mediated through the person of Jesus which supplies the ideas
and values which in turn should shape a Christian's life. So too,
various schools of spirituality within the Christian sphere, such as
eremitical or Franciscan or Ignatian spirituality, supply variations
and refinements of the Christian vision.
Looking at spirituality as action does not result in a limiting
or exclusive definition. Indeed, this approach intends the very op-
posite. Action includes and integrates dimensions of the spiritual
life that frequently go overlooked. For example, all aspects of secu-
lar life in the world are drawn into the sphere of one's spiritual
life. Moreover the category of action helps to clarify the interrela-
tionships of some of the elements of spirituality that are often
dealt with separately. For example, faith and spirituality can be
understood reductively to be synonymous. On the existential level of
personal and subjective appropriation, faith and spirituality are
identical because both refer to the fundamental option and commitment
of a person that is actually lived out in his or her action. The more
theoretical sense of faith, which appears when one addresses it objec-
tively as "the faith," coincides with the understanding of the world
and human life in it that in turn provides the vision for human action
or underlies it. Spirituality, when recognized as grounded in human
action, appears as nothing less than the living out of a vision of
faith. Action is the actuality of the internalized vision.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 23
The issue underlying spirituality, that which is at stake in it,
is in every case union with God. This is true even in the case of the
atheist or the person not religiously inclined. For just as the ques-
tion of one's destiny cannot be escaped, neither can the correlative
question of whether or not my action and hence my being in this world
correspond to the ultimate reason of things. The question of whether
or not one's action unfolds within the context of the all-encompassing
truth of reality itself logically cannot be avoided. The "dynamic of
willing itself that underlies all human action is rooted in a love
of being and an implicit demand for absolute being. In the Christian
vision of things, this desire to be conformed with reality itself and
thus affirmed in and by being itself takes the form of union with the
personal God whom Jesus called Father. Christian spirituality is the
living out of this vision in action.
The First Principle and Foundation
With this conception of spirituality as a background, let us move
to the issues raised by the sixteenth-century Spiritual Exercises of
Ignatius. In the first part of this essay I pointed to a certain in-
dividualistic framework and an eschatological bias underlying the Ig-
natian formula. The formula characterizes the fundamental reason for
being of human beings predominantly in terms of the final salvation
of each one of us. Reflection on the goal of the salvation of one's
soul in the end might be a fitting point of departure for some
Christians, but it hardly does justice to the demands of the spiritual
life today. Without negating the perennial validity of dimensions
that the Ignatian formula stresses, it must be reinterpreted to re-
spond to the spiritual questions that are being asked today. The idea
that action has an eternal value will be the key to this reinterpreta-
tion.
Some Christians who come to the Exercises do not worry about
their own personal salvation. This lack of anxiety may not stem from
a tacit Pelagian pride, but simply a deep internalization once and
for all of the Christian vision of things mediated by the person of
Jesus. The God of the universe, and thus the principle governing the
inner logic of reality itself and hence of my being, is personal,
24 HAIGHT
benevolent, and dedicated to summoning back into God's own personal
life all of creation. Having internalized this, some may want more in
a spirituality than the Ignatian groundwork provides. For example, a
much more vital question for many people may concern the significance
of Christian salvation for their lives here and now. They want the
salvation mediated by Jesus Christ to bestow a present value on then-
world, an intrinsic meaning on their action in it, not simply an
eschatological salvation. It is simply not apparent today that the
reason for our being in this world is to "praise, reverence, and
serve God" in any direct fashion. Ignatius's formula correctly cap-
tures the idea that God is the ground of our being and salvation, so
that gratitude, praise, reverence, and service should be the context
of all our action. But ninety-nine percent of our active lives un-
avoidably consists in doing other things. The issue, then, concerns
the way these attitudes can be subsumed into the framework of the
concrete things that we do in the world. Does the First Principle and
Foundation say anything about the use and value of the freedom and
action that Christians invest in the world? Through what kinds of
action should the praise, reverence, and service of God in this world
be rendered?
The first principle and foundation today should include some
statement concerning human responsibility to this world and the eter-
nal value of human action in this world and for this world. The first
principle and foundation ought to illumine how human action in this
world even now is saved, and that the exercise of my freedom and the
creativity of my action count. Human work can have a validity now that
will last in the end time. The formula should also be made to address
the question of the ultimate value of my action in more than the
purely individual and eschatological terms of the final salvation of
my soul. It must assert that the reason for one's being in this world
includes a responsibility for the world and that the exercise of that
responsibility will not go for nought. Human freedom and its creative
action is a form of being in the world and for the world. The first
principle and foundation should show how biblical symbols affirm the
absolute and everlasting value of everything positive, everything
done in love, that is posited by human action. At this point an
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 25
anthropology of action can draw out of the biblical symbolism of
creation, covenant, prophetic criticism, and the New Testament's
reduction of the Law to an identification of the love of God with the
love of neighbor, a much fuller and more adequate statement of the
reason of our being and action.
The first principle and foundation might look something like
this: God the Creator bestowed on human beings the gift freedom which,
as a real power to fashion new being, carries with it responsibility.
Each person, therefore, has a God-given responsibility and opportunity
to exercise that freedom in creative achievement in and for the world.
God's final or eschatological act will be patient of what our personal
and corporate freedom presents back to God. Our final salvation, then,
cannot be conceived in abstraction from our creative action in and for
the world which God has in large measure placed in our corporate and
personal hands. Jesus' parable of the talents, which forms a part of
the explanation of his central message of the kingdom of God, points
to the rationale of creation and the logic of salvation that unfolds
within the framework of human existence conceived as action. In the
light of this formula, the Ignatian expression "to save one's soul"
could be construed as an individualist temptation contrary to the
will of God if it elicited an egocentric desire for my salvation that
bypassed the responsibility implicit in God's very creation of human
freedom. But the formula could also be reinterpreted as a religious
framework for a much fuller consideration of the Christian vision of
the ultimate value of human freedom and action in and for the ongoing
creation of the world.
The Consideration of Sin
How are we to deal with the extensive amount of time that Ig-
natius gives over to the consideration of one's personal sin, that is,
when it appears that a retreatant may not have the inward sensibility
to which it appeals? Would it be right to awaken that sensibility? At
what point does the introspection that this entails shade into
spiritual masochism, which ironically becomes a secret form of
narcissism? Are we to bemoan the contemporary loss of an agonized
sense of personal sin and guilt that underlies the apparent lack of a
26 HAIGHT
need for personal confession? Is there a theology of sin today that
can make sense out of the evident evolution that has taken place in
our culture? What is the sin that threatens the very meaningfulness
of our whole life in the world?
It is not my intention to respond to all these questions ade-
quately, but only to point the direction for a certain strategy. Apoint of departure for understanding a new sense of sin in which we
all participate lies in the social structure of my personal action, a
topic developed in Part II. The social world of which every individual
forms a part is constructed of patterns of action that in large meas-
ure corrode human values when they do not actually destroy human
life. Human beings cannot avoid participation in these social struc-
tures. Relative to each person these structures are objective. They
stand over against the individual and defy every individual will that
seeks to change them. More than this, they fashion and shape individ-
ual action into their own image and likeness. No one can escape social
sin because everyone participates in the social mechanisms that injure
and dehumanize the marginalized victims of society and corrupt the
values of all.
In reality, a sense of sin in the world is not decreasing but in-
creasing. But it is not merely personal sin that ultimately dominates
our consciousness, but what is symbolized by original sin and has
come to be known as the sin of the world. This sin is constantly
being identified for us in specific social structures of behavior,
and we hate to hear about it. Consciousness of this sin, even when
only implicit, does not cause personal confusion and anxiety but a
general disorientation and a sense of entrapment. It can lead to
cynicism and through cynicism to the mortal threat to freedom that
resides in boredom or indifference. It saps one's courage and leads
one to doubt the value of good action because it is drawn up into the
vortex of social systems and their consequences that rob any good
that the individual does of any significant effect.
Of course the seeds of sin lie in each individual; sin would not
appear in society were it not for the innate egoism that is part of
the very constitution of everyone's freedom. Surely one must wrestle
with inner concupiscence in the attempt to be open to the power of the
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 27
gracious Spirit that will alone overcome it. But there is another
hidden level of subjective sin. The objective sin of the world, in
its concrete manifestations as social sin, does not remain objective.
Sinful patterns of human action are out-there-real only because they
are also introjected and internalized to become part of our own sub-
jectivity. The experience of entrapment thus has both objective and
subjective dimensions; social participation qualifies the very motives
of our action. Our action merges with the world and society; the
world is part of us even as we are part of the world; we cannot escape
willing participation in the evil structures which make up our world.
We are consumers in a consumer society; we tacitly support aggressive
economic and political foreign policy; we use a language the carries
sexist and racist values.
The examination of this sin should begin outside the self with an
analysis of the social environment in which we live; it can only be
approached through objective analysis. At the same time, however, this
objective analysis includes self-analysis. But this meditation does
not end within the self; it opens out towards the world. We should
meditate on the dehumanizing effects of the social patterns of our
corporate action on concrete groups of people. Self-examination here
deals with the way we have unconsciously bought into the cultural
systems of sinful disvalue and allowed them to shape our conscious-
ness. We should examine the measure in which we cooperate in aggres-
sive death-dealing practices or have accepted them in a passive escape
from freedom. In particular, we have to become aware of the subtlety
and ambiguous character of all our accustomed social behavior. The
real scandal of sin lies here; here too resides the potential to
experience an urgency that sin be resisted. Unless one faces up to
this sin, one will not be able to accept critically and honestly the
first principle and foundation, that my action has ultimate value.
In sum, the meditations on sin should be objective. Anyone who
looks at the world critically cannot not have a sense of sin. But it
is not a sense of sin that crushes the person with personal guilt so
that he or she may be saved by a sheerly personal salvation. Rather
it is a sense of sin that undermines the first principle and founda-
tion of the positive and constructive direction of my action with a
28 HAIGHT
global sense of futility. The response to this sin and its effects is
not merely forgiveness. Of course one could go nowhere without that
forgiveness; the acceptance by God of the person precisely as a sinner
provides the very foundation for any further freedom. But after this
forgiveness, what? After the healing grace of forgiveness one needs a
positive direction for one's freedom and action in the world. The
response to the new sense of sin lies in the meditation on the kingdom
of God.
The Kingdom of God
We have seen that Ignatius's casting of the meditation on the
Kingdom of Christ is dated on at least two counts. Jesus did not pro-
claim himself as a king. What little we can know of the historical
Jesus acts as a negative norm for what we should proclaim about Jesus.
On this basis, Jesus' refusal of this title means that it is theolog-
ically inappropriate. But we may build on the kind of "king" that
Ignatius presents us with, for it is no typical king. Also the presup-
positions concerning the breadth of salvation that he behind this
meditation no longer correspond to a current theological view. In his
first prelude to the consideration of the Incarnation, Ignatius de-
picts the "Three Divine Persons" looking down upon the world and
seeing "that all are going down to hell."17
If one accepts the theol-
ogical doctrine of Vatican II that grace is universally available,
and if one judges that God's universal salvific will and grace are
effective, then the bias here seems unduly pessimistic about the
ultimate destiny of the race. One could make distinctions to justify
the Ignatian contemplation as a thought-experiment. The point remains,
however, that the whole line of thought misses today's target. Can
this consideration, so absolutely central to the logic of Christianity
and Christian life, be realigned to confirm the Foundation against
the problem of sin in our new context? 18 The thesis that human action
Exercises, 102.
18 What is said here will also shed light on the Meditation on Two Stan-
dards. Exercises, 136-148.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 29
can participate in God's action opens up the meaning of the kingdom
of God in response to today's experience of sin.
Jesus himself preached the kingdom of God. Much of that preaching
took the form of parable and example. It also appeared against a back-
ground of multiple traditions of interpretation of what the very
phrase "kingdom of God" meant. As a result, the phrase so abounds in
richness and complexity of meaning that it remains impossible to
determine with complete precision exactly what Jesus intended by the
kingdom of God. However, despite these difficulties, one can say with
confidence that it implies at least the following for our own Chris-
tian imagination: that God is sovereign, the transcendent God of the
universe; that God's will, often at odds with human values, is to be
done in this world; that God wills justice among people and nations
in this world, so that the humanity of people is not trampled here
and now even as it will not be in the final reign of God. The medita-
tions of the Second Week, if they keep close to the synoptics, will
bear this out.
This Jesus who bears this message is the focal point for the im-
agination of the Christian's faith in God. Prescinding from the chris-
tological question, because the issue here is prior to it, Christian
faith always has Jesus as the center of its relationship to God. This
man, in his teaching and the way he lived his life, all of which make
up his person, defines for Christians the very revelation of God.
Therefore, of all the possible vehicles in the world that may lead a
person to God, for the Christian Jesus remains the privileged and
normative "way" to God.19 This basic consideration opens up the
essential logic of the rest of the Exercises which focus on Jesus.
What formality does a consideration of the kingdom of God open
up for meditations on the life of Jesus? What specific light does the
19 The idea that Jesus is the "way" to God is a fundamental theme in the
whole christology of Jon Sobrino. See his Christology at the Crossroads: ALatin American Approach, trans, by John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,
1978). This same volume contains an application of his christology to the
Spiritual Exercises. In this regard, an important contribution is that of J.
Peter Schineller, The Newer Approaches to Christology and Their Use in the
Spiritual Exercises," Studies in tlie Spirituality of Jesuits, 12/4-5
(September-November 1980).
30 HAIGHT
consideration of "the kingdom of God as preached by Jesus" throw upon
the reflections of the Second and Third Weeks? And how does this
relate to the newly interpreted logic of the foundation and the threat
of sin? The following four general guidelines may be helpful in re-
sponding to these questions.
First of all, the humanity of Jesus should dominate one's con-
siderations. One should view Jesus as a human being. Of course, the
Christian doctrine of Jesus' divinity must remain intact, but it is
essential to see how it functions here. The doctrine of Jesus' divin-
ity explains why one attends to him in order to understand oneself,
the world, and God. But it should not dominate in the functional
process of looking to Jesus in order to shape one's spirituality. The
essential nature of Christian spirituality from a christological
point of view has always been some form of imitatio Christi, of dis-
cipleship. But we do not and cannot imitate or follow Jesus insofar as
he is divine. In other words, the more one maximizes the divinity of
Jesus in a consideration of his life, the less directly relevant he
becomes as a revelation for the meaning of human existence that can
be imitated and followed. As a fust guideline, then, one should fix
attention on the person of Jesus under the aspect of his being truly
a human being, consubstantial with us and like us in all things except
sin.
Secondly, one should attend to the human logic of his preaching
and action. Since the essence of spirituality consists in a way of
life, the logic of one's behavior and action, one should attend to
the parts and the whole of Jesus' life. What are the values that con-
trolled his commitment? What fundamental option shaped his whole
life? Through what specific decisions and actions did his commitment
to the kingdom of God play itself out? Or, vice versa, how did his
action measure up to what he preached as his fundamental ideal? At
this point the historical and social conflicts that Jesus encountered,
the choices he made and for whom he made them, the convictions for
which he was willing to die, all take on enormous importance. Where
did Jesus locate sin, and how did he deal with his adversaries? In
other words, Jesus was killed because of his spirituality, because of
what he did. His spirituality was countercultural and in fact, on the
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 31
level of history, his going around doing good was swallowed up in the
larger world of social rejection. But despite the tragic end, the
concrete actions of Jesus and their overall logic still constitute
for Christians a revelation of the meaning of human existence and how
human life should be led.
Thirdly, our action may participate in the action of God in
history. The New Testament, especially Luke, portrays Jesus' mission
as animated by the Spirit of God. The phrase, "the Spirit of God"
symbolizes the immanence of God in the world, especially within human
life, inspiring and empowering human action. In terms of christology,
the Spirit is one way in which the New Testament writers explain the
divine dimension of the life of Jesus. Jesus was "possessed" by the
Spirit of God; the Spirit of God was within him. This Spirit christol-
ogy opens up the analogy between Jesus' life and the doctrine of
cooperative grace in the history of Christian anthropology. Insofar
as human action may participate in the immanent action of God in
history, Jesus becomes a genuine revealer of the real possibilities
of our action. In discipleship, then, the same kingdom of God that so
intimately controlled Jesus' person and action can also become the
fundamental option of Christian life. Identification with Jesus,
then, means internalizing his message in such a way that it allows
our action in our world to participate in the action of God in his-
tory.
Fourthly, the resurrection of Jesus attests to the ultimate and
eternal value of his actions. A person is constituted by his or her
actions, so that the actuality of any person should not be considered
independently of what he or she does. Jesus has to be looked upon as
just such a concrete human person. Historically, his actions were as
discrete, particular, and limited as those of any other human being.
Yet the resurrection confirms that this life of his was not only
meaningful, but was also eternally valuable and valid. In other words,
God raised Jesus because he lived the life that he lived. Revelation
of the resurrection of Jesus carries the affirmation that precisely
his kind of life has been ratified and guaranteed by God as having
eternal value. It was not some interior principle or substance that
was raised, but Jesus, and Jesus was his vision and his actions. That
32 HAIGHT
these count is attested to by their being drawn up into the very life
of God.
These four principles, then, set a context in which the kingdom
of God as preached by Jesus and exemplified in his life reasserts the
first principle and foundation against the background and threat of
sin. The premise is that in the Exercises we approach Jesus to nur-
ture spirituality, our way of life in the world. The doctrine of
Jesus' divinity signifies that in the life of Jesus we have an embod-
iment of God, of God's will for human life, and thus a revelatory
lived parable of the logic of a human life according to God's will.
Thus in the stories about Jesus we contemplate primarily the logic of
his action, what it is based on and where it leads. For spirituality
consists in a way of life that follows Jesus' vision of the Kingdom
in ever new situations in history.
Election and the will of God
We move now to the area of the election and making a decision
that corresponds to God's will. In the first part of this essay I
pointed out that modern cultural experience and some theologians call
into question the idea that God has a specific plan for history and
thus a concrete or specific will for individuals in it. In this sec-
tion I wish to develop this point and introduce a distinction that
may clarify the implications of this experience for spirituality. I
shall not demonstrate the correctness of the principle, for I am not
clear how that could be done. I simply propose another way of looking
at things.
Many people today find it difficult to imagine that God directly
governs history, or that God has a specific will for the way each in-
dividual should lead his or her life. Quite simply, when one takes a
critical look at the condition of the human race today, it would be
scandalous to assign responsibility for what we see to God. If God
tolerates the actual unfolding of history that we witness, if God
allows the personal and collective decisions that make up the reality
of history, it seems to follow that God has no predetermined plan for
the development of human history nor for anyone's personal history.
In other words, the present sense not only of the seriousness of
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 33
human free action but also of the reality of its creative effects
leads to a corresponding sense that God has really left human history
in human hands. This experience raises in a new way the long tra-
dition of cosmic speculation on the relation between divine omnipo-
tence, providence, and governance on the one hand and human freedom
on the other. But there are current theological systems that deal
with this and allow for the reality of the creativity of human ac-
tion.20
In addressing this problem on the level of spirituality, one may
distinguish between a general will and a specific will of God. On the
one hand, Christians have ample witness to the general will of God in
the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament as mediated by the
person of Jesus. God's general will objectively for social history is
communicated in Jesus' message of the kingdom of God. God wills that
justice characterize the structure of our common public life as well
as personal relations. God's will for every person may be generalized
in the command that love be the fundamental motive and character of
all human actions. But God has no special or specific will that gov-
erns the concrete decisions of people's lives or how that love is to
be effected. This does not mean that God is unconcerned about in-
dividuals and their behavior, but rather that God does not have a
concrete plan or intention for each person's life. Like a mature
parent who totally wishes his or her children good fortune, God has
not chosen the particulars of their careers.
Thus what is at stake in the election, that which is to be deci-
ded, is not God's will but my will. All concrete human choices,
whether they be decisions that encompass a lifelong commitment or
ones that are more routine, are my decisions. They can never be
equated with the will of God, nor can we evade full responsibility
for them by transcendent claims. The best one can do is try to reason
why this or that decision more closely corresponds to the general
will of God for all people, given this concrete situation. The insis-
tence on this single point, because it is so fundamental, has sig-
nificant implications for the way we view our Christian and religious
20See Appendix and notes 34, 35, and 36.
34 HAIGHT
life. In many ways decisions concerning the Christian life are
scarcely distinct from the elections made by men and women generally.
From another point of view, however, Christians are guided by the
revelation of God's general will in Jesus, and this amounts to a
world of difference.
This view of the will of God and an election relative to it does
not undermine the language of vocation, but it does modify it. The
general will of God constitutes the vocation of every human person
taken singly. All Christians who pattern their lives on Jesus inter-
nalize the same vocation. But each one must decide how that general
vocation will come to fruition in one's own life, given one's specific
talents and historical situation. One need not conceive of God as
having a special plan for the course of one's personal life in order
to sanctify it in some extraordinary way as a particular way of life.
The sacred character of every single way of life can only be measured
by the degree in which one actually lives it in conformity to God's
exigency revealed in the symbol of the kingdom of God. An election of
a state of life is serious business. But a particular decision should
never be simply equated with a specific will of God. It is my decis-
ion, which may conform to the general will of God in a greater or
lesser degree.
The status of even the most serious of life decisions can be
clarified in terms of the different levels of the human will analyzed
in Part II. Whatever the decision, it is a concrete historically
limited choice of the will. Once every specific choice of the will is
seen in its historical perspective, as a moment in my history situated
in a changing social history, it can never be seen as fully embracing
the goal of "the dynamic of willing itself' or as fully constituting
one's fundamental option. Action always unfolds in a continuum over
time, a duration, so that every moment cannot be other than a part of
the whole. For example, some decisions or elections are so basic and
decisive that they may in fact, as it turns out, give a permanent
shape to our fundamental option. But even such decisions require a
constant and continuous series of historical choices and actions that
may, in another context, seem to contradict the initial decision. At
the same time, these seeming reversals in new circumstances may still
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 35
be in conformity with one's vision of the goal of "the dynamic of
willing itself." They may also be consistent with and fortify con-
structively the fundamental option which the initial decision helped
to fashion. Due to finitude and sin, we can really but only partially
identify our concrete choices and action with the goal of "the dynam-
ic of willing itself." The end of human existence, specified by the
life of Jesus, becomes equivalent to the will of God and the goal
toward which we hope to direct our own fundamental option through our
successive decisions and actions.
The recognition that objectively God has not laid out a specific
path for the freedom of a person can be of great help in the spiritual
life of action. The recognition of finitude releases people from the
anxious quest for certainty about God's specific will that is unavail-
able because, in this view of things, it does not exist. At the same
time, God's general will provides a vision and norm for the whole of
life. This view also bestows on human decision a responsibility and
seriousness that can energize human action. What we do not do to
further the kingdom of God will not be done. God values human action.
The Discernment of Spirits
We come now to the question of the discernment of spirits. Few
other areas in religious life generally and in Jesuit life in par-
ticular seem more clouded in an aura of mystification. Who has not
experienced patently wrong and destructive decisions made in religious
life that are simultaneously justified by a language of "prayer,"
"discernment," and "the will of God"? What is going on in the lan-
guage of discernment? The analysis of the workings of different levels
of human willing will also help to clarify the process of discernment.
We have seen that Ignatius believed in the "spirits," invisible
but out-there-real. These spirits have been largely demythologized
today. Especially through psychology, whether it be depth psychology
that allows us to analyze the subconscious complexity of our motiva-
tions, or a more popular sensitivity to the dynamics of personality,
the spirits have become internalized. They are the intricate move-
ments of our needs and desires. While this has been a salutary devel-
opment, because sound psychology can certainly help clarify our inten-
36 HAIGHT
tions, it has also had some less healthy side effects. The worst of
these, when it occurs, is the impression often suggested by the lan-
guage of "discernment" that, in sorting out the psychological spirits
of one's personality, one is at the same time "getting in touch with,"
or even directly "experiencing," either God's Spirit or the specific
will of God. It is sometimes subtly suggested that one can have or
indeed does have a religious experience of God's specific will for a
concrete situation. In other words, what has happened is that the
absoluteness of the transcendent object of the dynamic of willing
itself and the object of choice have become confused, so that suddenly
one is hearing the voice of God.
If one does not experience the spirits, surely one experiences
the Spirit in one's life. What does it mean to "experience" grace?
This question too should be placed against the background of the
traditional tension between human freedom and grace, and especially
the direction in which the Spirit of God may be said to lead one. The
Spirit or working of grace does not dictate specifically this or that
historical decision or action. The tension in the human spirit and
will is between sin and love, between a constraining egoism and an
expansive self-transcending charity. In the traditional view grace is
posited over against an elementary tendency to sin which is part of
the human condition. The work of the Spirit or grace, then, cannot be
experienced as it were objectively in itself; it is always mediated
in specific historical terms. But the very variety of its possible
mediations militates against any single mediated experience being
equated with God's Spirit. God's grace, then, operates on the level
of the opening up of the freedom of choice to the transcendent good
that corresponds to the dynamic of willing itself. But it does not
prescribe this or that specific action. One cannot experience grace
or God's Spirit categorically; or better, God's Spirit remains tran-
scendent to every categorical or historically mediated experience of
it.21
21In certain situations of a clear choice between good and evil, the
general will of God may function in a way that makes it appear as though this
specific decision were the particular will of God. In other words, those cases
in which one seems to experience the specific will of God here and now can be
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 37
Demythologization of the spirits helps overcome and guard against
the tendency of the language of discernment to fall into the illusion
that God's specific will can be revealed to a person. But after they
are demythologized the spirits should be projected again outside of
the self and objectified in the world. The good and evil spirits are
in the world; they are in the culture and society that shape our
lives because we have internalized them. The discernment of the spir-
its is a discernment of the world, for which one needs, if not a
critical social theory, at least a critical attitude that brings
objective reason and analysis to bear on the objects of choice and
their consequences in the objective order. An analysis of motives
alone is completely insufficient for deciding what my action should
be against the horizon of the general will of God for the world as
manifested in Jesus. To free the language of discernment from the
mystification that surrounds it, it should be closely related to the
objective moral and ethical reasoning performed by any conscientious
human being in his or her given context, culture, and value system.22
The distinctions of levels of the human will can go far to ex-
plain what is going on in the discernment of the direction Christian
action should take. We have seen that beneath all concrete choices of
the will lies the dynamic of willing itself. This absolute love for
being reaches out toward God. In religious conversion the dynamic of
willing itself becomes focused in a particular vision of absolute
accommodated by what is actually the general will of God as revealed in Jesus.
In short, this language still explains that experience.
11Let me qualify this sharp statement by explaining more clearly what I
do not mean by it. I do not mean to suggest that God remains distant from humanbeings. In the doctrine of grace I subscribe to Rahner's view that the Spirit
is God's personal presence intimately at work in every individual as accepting
and affirming love. Moreover, this presence affects the totality of the person.
On the human side, then, religious and moral discernment involves every facet
of the whole person's response to reality. Thus not only mind but one's
feelings, emotions, intuitions, and general sensitivity mediate to us moral
and religious values. The dynamic of willing itself can be seen as the total
impulse of human affectivity for being; it is a love of being. Thus the thesis
here can be reduced to two points: (1) God's Spirit cannot be experienced
directly as if God were communicating to us a specific will; (2) because moral
discernment involves affectivity, especially feelings and emotions, these must
be carefully monitored by critical, objective, analytic, social reasoning.
38 HAIGHT
being. For the Christian the goal of willing itself is revealed as
the God whom Jesus called Father. Through Christian revelation the
goal of human action is also nurtured and developed by attachment to
the ideals and values that are mediated to us by the life of Jesus.
Thus the general will of God for the race and for each person becomes
integral to the object of the dynamic of willing itself. This general
will of God is the horizon of Christian decision making, the vision
that informs and structures the deepest part of our being and the
dynamic of willing itself that underlies all our human action. God's
general will as revealed in Jesus correlates with and informs the
dynamic of willing itself of the Christian.
When we consider the discernment of spirits and the rules for
making concrete decisions, it is crucial to see the distinction and
unity between the revealed goal of the dynamic of our willing itself
and the concrete choices of our will. Our human decisions and actions
are ours; God does not prescribe concrete human behavior. But our
desire should be to make our decisions against the horizon of our
appreciation of God's general will and to make them correspond to the
values and ideals implied there in the closest possible way. Against
this horizon, the series of our decisions and actions together, in-
cluding our limitations and failures, fashions our fundamental option
or decision and thus realizes our actual relationship with God.
In sum, the point of these reflections on election and discern-
ment is quite simple but also quite basic. Discernment concerns our
own will and action, and the most solid means for discovering what
this should be in the light of Christian faith involves an analytical
consideration of the world around us and ourselves in relation to
that world. One cannot base one's Christian commitment, one's life
and the concrete actions that fashion who we are, on immediate relig-
ious experiences, that is, on emotional or psychologically conscious
religious feelings and momentary enthusiasm. Given the pluralism of
religious experiences, their variability and eccentricity, common
human sense dictates that such is the perfect formula for grounding
one's life on illusion. In contrast to this, discernment of what
Christian action is to be, in common with the rest of the race, should
be an objective and reasonable process based on objective data and a
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 39
response to it guided by basic values. As Christians these values are
objectively presented to us in the life of Jesus. This process, then,
unfolds against the horizon of a general vision of God and human
life, given us through Jesus and experienced religiously as the ab-
solute goal of the very dynamism of human life and action.
Finding God in action
Finally, we arrive at the question of the tension between prayer
and action. The issue is reflected in the final consideration of the
Exercises, the Contemplation to Attain the Love of God, insofar as one
of its themes is the finding of God in creation, in the world and our
action in the world.23 What can be said of the mutual relation between
prayer and action? The key to the solution to this tension lies in the
reality of possessive knowledge described in Part II.
The problem really resides in the fact that both prayer and doing
things in the world are discrete actions. Prayer is a specific action,
just as knowing and doing are forms of action. Because they are
distinct forms of action, they can compete for our attention, energy,
and time. Ignatius was well aware of this, and the dialectical
tension-filled axiom about the Jesuit as simul in actione contempla-
tivus seems to represent his mind. The solution to the question pre-
sented by Joseph Conwell, in which he retrieves the Ignatian ideal
through a study of Nadal, seems to me to be eminently sound. It con-
sists precisely in a tension: Apostolic work that responds to Goddirectly nurtures prayer; and formal prayer directly leads or impels
to apostolic work. The "times spent" in this tension mutually enhance
each other. And for this very reason Ignatius could and did minimize
time spent in formal prayer.
Without seeking to undermine the dialectical relation between
prayer and action in the conscious life of the Jesuit, I think, never-
theless, that Blondelian language can shed more light on the subject
of the mutual relation between prayer and action in the sense of
practice. The two forms of action are not equal partners. This can
be shown by a simple contrast. In the end, prayer alone does not and
23Exercises, 230-237.
40 HAIGHT
cannot constitute a real union with God. But, in the end, action
alone, in the sense of doing or practice, can and does constitute a
real union with or separation from God.
Given this stark difference, how would one analytically account
for the relationship between prayer and practice? An explanation for
this difference can be found in the distinction between knowledge or
awareness that exists without practice and that which is mediated
through practice. It is true that both prayer and practice are gener-
ically forms of action. But the specifically different kind of action
that is practice mediates a qualitatively different kind of union and
possession between the knower and the known that surpasses the action
of prayer itself. Practice acts as a bond that seals union with God in
actuality. Action in the sense of practice serves as a "reality
principle"; practice constitutes the unity of the human with God. This
accounts for the typically Johannine truisms: Action, not words; do
the truth; love of God is realized in doing God's will.
As was said, both prayer and doing are forms of categorical
action. But the direct object and telos (end) of prayer differ from
those of action in the world. Prayer is directed to God. Because it is
intentionally directed to God, this form of action is quite distinct
from action pointed outward to objects in the world. Its function in
anthropological terms is to nurture the vision that surrounds the
object of our dynamic of willing itself. In Christian prayer one is
in dialogue with a God of love whose love is also, in the words of
Luther, pro me; that is, God's love encompasses me as an individual.
In this personal dialogue, our dynamic of willing itself is trans-
formed by being brought into the context of a personal relationship.
Action in the sense of practice in this world is quite distinct
in its intentional object; it is precisely oriented not to God but to
this world. But this action constitutes our relationship to God, and
if it is performed within the context of the Christian vision, it
aims at nothing less than making the relationship with God that is
nurtured in prayer a real and actual relationship. The effect of
action is this: Through successive actions persons forge their
fundamental option so that it more and more closely approaches the
desire of their dynamic of willing itself. Concrete practice binds
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 41
together in actual fact God's general will and our specific will. And
finally, insofar as all human action is theandric action, a union
between God's action and our action is fused according to God's will.
As Blondel says of knowledge and action in relation to being, although
both may reflect a true relationship, there can be all the difference
between them that obtains between privation and possession. Union
with God, which is the point of all spirituality, becomes real through
action in the sense of doing.
From this point of view, prayer may be characterized as rela-
tively important for our spirituality when spirituality is conceived
as a way of life. I should stress here that to say that something is
relatively important does not mean that it is unimportant. The point
is not to minimize prayer, but to define its place in the whole spir-
itual life. It is crucial that the vision out of which action proceeds
be clear, that it be a conscious horizon for behavior. This conscious
horizon has the character of a personal relationship with God and all
that this implies. But on the other hand, that vision may be so deep
and controlling that it does not need a great deal of explicit nur-
ture. Thus the amount of formal prayer among a variety of Jesuits may
in turn vary greatly. But what is absolutely important, because in
the end it determines union with God, is the kind and quality of
action in the sense of practice that makes up the whole of a Jesuit
life. This view, I think, corresponds to the "mind" of Ignatius, who
was extremely reticent to dictate time spent in formal prayer, but
rather left this kind of decision to the discretion of individual
Jesuits according to their personal needs. And as far as I can see,
nothing in the New Testament contradicts this view, while everything
that we know of Jesus supports it. Jesus' prayer was completely subor-
dinated to his mission: Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth,
even as it will be in the final kingdom (see Mt 6:10).
At this point the elements of a spirituality that has at its very
center action in the world that promotes social justice fall into
place. Earlier I showed how faith in God and spirituality can be seen
as reductively identical because one's deepest and real faith lies
embedded in one's action. When that action merges with the general
will of God revealed in Jesus as the reign of God, a person becomes
42 HAIGHT
united with God. The objectification of God's will for the Kingdom
must be structured by social justice; God wills social justice. Whena person engages in activity that promotes this justice, he or she
becomes one with God in three ways: morally, by a union of wills;
contemplatively, by possessive knowledge of the God who wills jus-
tice; ontologicaUy, by cooperative response to the intimate presence
of God's personal Spirit. In this spirituality a person does not
dwell passively in the truth of God, but becomes mystically bound in
ontic union with God through cooperating in God's action in the world.
This visionary action has as its ultimate goal the creation of
social justice. But it is important to see why this social dimension
bears such crucial weight. We saw how precisely the social sin that
dominates today's complex world threatens to crush human beings not
only materially by its concrete effects but also spiritually. It saps
the energy out of human freedom itself. The way to resist this sin,
after therapy, lies in the effort to attack and change the very
structures that cause the damage. Moreover, this has to be done cor-
porately, through group behavior, or the individual will scarcely
survive the discouragement of constant defeat. Individuals alone
cannot resist institutional sin. We must function as groups which
themselves become public institutions of grace. And these societies
must act in solidarity through corporate planning of their goals and
strategies. Concretely, although much has been gained by the movement
toward individually directed retreats, much too may be lost when this
individual direction does not unfold in the context of groups making
the Exercises together. In this common project different roles have
to be played; a corporate effort demands a division of labor. The
movement for social justice cannot simply go on at the barricades.
There has to be mutual support in a differentiated common cause.
Those employed in other roles of leadership in the community such as
education are just as vital in the project to create a more just
society as those who engage in more direct social projects.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 43
CONCLUSION
The effort here has been to demythologize some of the sixteenth-
century aspects of Ignatian language and to reinterpret some of the
fundamental themes of Jesuit spirituality in terms more congenial to
late-twentieth-century experience. Obviously there must be some ad-
justment between the sixteenth and the twentieth centuries. The medi-
ating framework that I have used consists of distinctions borrowed
from BlondePs philosophy of action, which are most congenial to an
apostolic order of religious whose tradition has led its members to
every sort of action in the world. The use of these transcendental
anthropological categories has this advantage: It transposes the
issue underlying spirituality out of the domain of psychology and
explicitly conscious religious experience to a deeper level of relig-
ious experience, one that can be understood through the transcendental
dynamics of human existence and its destiny.
In this context I have proposed the following interpretations:
First of all, the core of what we mean by spirituality lies in action.
Human existence itself is free spiritual action in the world. Reflec-
tive spirituality concerns the theological vision of created reality
and how human actions correspond to the ultimate truth of reality
itself. In this light, the first principle and foundation embraces
the absolute worth of human action in and for the world. Human action
counts because God has shared with human beings responsibility in
participating in God's own creative activity in the world over time.
This intrinsic reason for being will lead to a final salvation that
incorporates human creativity. This is the groundwork.
The most serious menace of sin comes from the vast sin of the
world that seems to undermine the value of human action. Social sin
attacks the groundwork. In its aggressive form the sin of the world
corrupts human action by funneling it into mechanisms that destroy
human lives. In a subtle form it undermines the groundwork by foster-
ing an escape from freedom itself. But in Christ and the kingdom he
lived and died for, the Christian finds revealed an empowering ideal
44 HAIGHT
that stands directly opposed to sin. In other words, the value of
human action finds confirmation in the kingdom of God that Jesus
preached and especially from his action in accordance with that king-
dom which has been raised up into the very life of God.
People make the Exercises in order to adjust their own will in
the major and minor decisions that make up their lives to the general
will of God revealed in Jesus. This will of God is not a preset plan
which we anxiously seek to discover. It is rather an open invitation
and an exhilarating challenge to our freedom. These decisions are our
decisions, and our action is our action, upon which God bestows an
eternal reality and value when action cooperates with God's impulse
of love. We are responsible to God but for the world,24 and to God
through that responsibility for the world, for this is the will of Godmanifested in Jesus. Prayer, then, is subsidiary to this human
project. For the Christian it keeps alive and nurtures the vision of
the principle and foundation in an interpersonal context. The union
with God that it looks for, however, is fashioned in this world by
action for God's kingdom.
Let me conclude this discussion in terms of another Ignatian
phrase: The Jesuit should be an instrumentum conjunction Deo (an in-
strument united with God).25 The phrase conjunctum Deo expresses well
the dynamic that I have described. The instrument here is not a life-
less and dead tool, but a human person whose action is free and genu-
inely creative. We exercise this freedom in a secular world, and we
must respond to this world like everyone else in a secular way in
planning our categorical actions. But for Christians this transpires
against an horizon and within a context of a transcendent faith vis-
ion. Our action is responsive to a personal God revealed in Jesus.
That God is immanent to the world by creative power and by the per-
24H. Richard Niebuhr, The Responsibility of the Church for Society," The
Gospel, the Church and the World, ed. by Kenneth Scott Latourette (New York /London: Harper & Brothers, 1946), pp. 111-133.
The phrase, one which carried considerable weight in Ignatius's under-
standing of apostolic Jesuits, is taken from the Jesuit Constitutions. Ignatius
of Loyola, The Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans., intro., and
commentary by George E. Ganss (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources,
1970), nos. 813-814, pp. 332-333.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 45
sonal self-presence to each individual by grace or God's Spirit. Thus
our action in the world is not only coaction with the world and other
human beings, but also as Blondel says the-ergy, work with God, a
notion completely in line with tradition of the notion of cooperative
grace. In this framework the language of "building the kingdom of God"
makes complete sense. And in this framework, too, one can see that the
key document of the 32nd General Congregation, "Our Mission Today,"
is a faithful translation of Ignatian spirituality for today's world.
APPENDIX: SOME ASPECTS OF BLONDEL'S
ANTHROPOLOGY OF ACTION
In this appendix I wish to present some aspects of BlondePs
philosophy of action as it appears in his major work, his doctoral
thesis, entitled L'Action.26 This anthropology of action represents
the substratum upon which the preceding interpretation of Ignatian
spirituality rests. Although I shall consistently appeal to this
work, my intention is not simply to represent with historical accuracy
his thought, which unfolded in its own special context of the
philosophical world in France at the end of the nineteenth century.
It will be apparent that at times I go beyond Blondel. In general,
Blondel may be likened to Karl Rahner in the sense that Blondel was
at the head of a tradition in Catholic thought that centered on the
human subject as the starting point for philosophical inquiry. But
unlike Rahner, who remained in the intellectualist tradition of
Aquinas, Blondel focused his attention on human action and the will,
both of which are categories more directly congenial to the area of
Christian life and spirituality.
Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a
Science of Practice, trans, by Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1984). Page references to this work will be placed in
parentheses in the text.
46 HAIGHT
Action
Several reasons make it difficult to initially define the term
"action" in a precise way. "Action" is an analogous term; like "being"
or "existence" in classical philosophy, the term is at the same time
the most abstract and general and the most concrete of notions. "Ac-
tion" refers to human existence on a variety of levels and thus has
different specific meanings in a variety of contexts. One must always
be aware of the context in which the term action is being discussed
and the level of the discussion. Action can range in meaning from the
sheer existence of a human being to the concrete practices and be-
haviors a person performs. To begin, therefore, it may be helpful to
characterize the richness of the term as it will be used here.
In its deepest and most fundamental level, action is existence
itself. Action refers to human existence, but in a dynamic active
sense. Human existence is action. On this level of generality and
abstraction, action points to human existence prior to the exercise
of the will that fixes on this or that object; action refers of a
level of dynamic existing beneath all forms of knowledge; it embraces
human existing more deeply than conscious reflective motivation that
leads it to this or that specific practice. Action is the sheer datum
of dynamic human existence itself.27 The value of assuming this cate-
gory, then, lies in the fact that it orients us to think of the human
person as dynamic existence in the world. We are in a general thought-
world similar to the existentialism that stretches from Kierkegaard
to Sartre.
But the very dynamism of human existence is exercised in manifold
ways, and action is inclusive of all of them. Knowing is a form of
action; willing and choosing are actions; doing is acting and acting
is action. The analogous character of the category of action opens it
11The following text, although cited out of context, indicates the
deepest level of human existence to which the term action applies: "[T]he
question is resolved [in action] prior to the dialectical interplay of ideas,
in a region where the most hyperbolic doubt does not reach, underneath the
realm of the understanding, before the intervention of discursive thoughts,
more deeply than the intellectual necessities can press down their yoke, at
the very principle of our personal adherence to our nature, at the point where
we will our very selves. . .." Action, p. 395.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 47
up to all forms of concrete behavior, from the most speculative con-
templation of reality to the most practical task we perform. Thus
action can also refer to practice, to sheer doing, from the perfor-
mance of high ethical duty to the execution of the practical demands
of human life.
Action in BlondePs philosophy is very closely aligned with
willing; human action is willed action. And as will be seen further
on, a dialectic of action, that is, a phenomenological tracing of its
impulse and direction within consciousness, is at the same time a
dialectic of the will. Action ascends to the surface of human con-
sciousness as willing through the mediation of intelligence, the re-
flectivity of which accounts for its freedom.
Human action is free. The first quality or characteristic that
attends the notion of human existence as action is its freedom. This
freedom is not something that has to be proved deductively or on the
basis of outside or objective data. It is immediately apparent from
within the conscious appropriation of action itself. The quality of
freedom is so closely tied to action that at certain points the terms
almost appear as identical. All efforts to disprove freedom, to reduce
human action to mere function of deterministic forces or laws, presup-
pose and therefore establish the quality itself. For freedom is con-
tained in and mediated by the reflectivity of action to itself in
critical intelligence. The sheer datum of action reflecting back on
itself and proposing before itself distinct objective data illustrates
that action is freedom. Action is an autonomous freedom in the world
whose very awareness of itself is its first freedom.
So basic is the category of action that the term may be conceived
to refer to the principle of the unity and identity of the human
person. Here we get at the heart of BlondePs existentialism, for
action tends to replace the ideas of substance and individuation by
matter that characterize the classical philosophy of Aristotle. As he
puts it: "The idea of substance has been discussed at length: reduced
to what our analysis disclosed about it here, the substance of man is
action, he is what he does. . . . We are, we know, we live, only sub
specie actionis" (191). In other words, the unity and identity of
this person is the unity of its knowing, willing, doing, and being,
48 HAIGHT
and this is contained in its action. Action is the substantial bond
between soul and body, between one's elementary intention and the
whole organism; it makes the whole a whole. The one person subsists
in action. "Action is the cement with which we are fashioned; we
exist only to the extent that we act" (178; 178-182).
This metaphysical concept is correlative to and merely reflects
a more phenomenological description of the unity of personality. The
human person is an organism made up of multiple physical and spiritual
forces. Action pulls these multiple elements and forces together to
constitute the personality. Action is also centrifugal; it necessarily
transcends the self into the world. Action unites the person by
forming an organic synthesis between its physical and spiritual forces
and by focusing them in a centrifugal expansion into the world of
objects; it then bends back and returns to the self by centripetally
bringing the outer world into the self. Action thus constitutes the
person in itself and in its relation to the world (175-177).
Ascending still further to the surface of conscious intention,
action can be seen as constituting the character of a person. It
pulls together, organizes, and fixes the multiplicity of indifferent
and sometimes contrary interior states and fashions out of them a
solid center that "becomes like the core of our character" (183-4).
"It is because action manifests, fixes, confirms and even produces
the will, that it serves as a guaranty for promises and that it is
like the substance of irrevocable commitments" (184). This power of
action is demonstrated by its ability to define the self at a level
prior to and more determinative than conscious intelligence, design,
and willing. Through acting we can come to will that which was not
really consciously willed before the sheer decision to action; action
itself forges the will (184). And here one has the deepest logic for
the Ignatian principle of agere contra; one can defeat hostile and
subversive tendencies and conscious impulses by forging a will against
them by action (187). Practice is thus stronger than the conscious
will, more powerful than the agile speculative mind, which can jump
to myriad objects and possibilities, to synthesize and constitute the
personality. For action "is a systematic concentration of the diffuse
life in us; it is a taking possession of oneself' (188).
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 49
It is therefore the place to look for self-knowledge. "As long as
we do not act, we do not know ourselves" (183). But since it is impos-
sible not to act, it is in action that one can observe the real self.
Action that constitutes the self is what reveals the self; in it one
finds the secret of the self. "Hence it is by observing our acts more
than our thoughts that we must hope to see ourselves as we are and
make ourselves as we will" (183).
Up to this point we have been speaking of action as it is re-
vealed to consciousness in a personal and almost individualistic
sense. BlondeFs action is conceived in the philosophical context of
transcendental phenomenology, and does not begin with human beings as
social beings. And yet his conception of action opens out to the
social sphere and is not hostile to a social anthropology. Action is
always self-transcending and expansive; it emerges out of the self to
go beyond the self and into the world. Always in quest of further
growth, the secret ambition of willed action is to penetrate the
world with its intentions and to dominate it by absorbing it. It is
as if human will and action seek to prolong its own body and enrich
it with the body of the world, to make the world docile to human
thought and action so that the forces of nature seem to become an
instrument of action itself (202-204).
Thus all action is necessarily coaction; action unfolds not
simply alongside of other actions, but is intricately bound up with
them. The point is illustrated simply enough: All action is action
upon some object; but that which is acted upon also acts and enters
into the product. Thus, what is usually considered a material cause
in classical philosophy, Blondel sees as another efficient cause
because all being has an interior "subjectivity," a way of being that
is distinct and must be respected. Every action then is a kind of
synthesis, a unity of actions, a coaction, a concurrence, an
interaction (207-217).
Herein lies the ground for a social anthropology: The constitu-
tion of all human action is coaction, and the constitution of the
self occurs through the interaction of self, world, and other selves.
An act posited becomes objective and independent of the actor; it
50 HAIGHT
takes on an impersonal objective life of its own in its effects. It
becomes public, or simply there with a relative independence of its
own, and influences others. It so surpasses the actors and their
intention that they cannot restrict its consequences and effects. In
fact, all action tends to have a universal effect, for it produces
something which changes the world. Thus action is cooperative; it is
always action and response at the same time; the effects of other
actions influence my action even as my actions influence theirs.MBy
drawing us out of ourselves, action is for others, so that, in return,
others may be for us; it gives them our thought; it is the social
cement; it is the soul of common life" (221). Human beings are not
isolated selves, but are constituted as well by coaction, and
cooperation, the action of the world and other selves on our self. At
this point BlondePs analysis from a transcendental philosophical
perspective agrees nicely with a general theory of action from a
social scientific perspective. Beneath the common values and ideas
and their symbolic representations, cultures and societies are bound
together most fundamentally by common action, the structures of
actions and the patterns of behavior.
Knowledge, being, and action
Let us return now to a personalist perspective and describe the
interrelationships of knowledge, being, and action. Generally
speaking, BlondePs work on action is a philosophy of life, as its
subtitle indicates. And action is a category that is more fundamental
or basic than knowledge. Knowledge emerges out of action in its most
primary sense of the sheer datum of human existence. Itself a special
form of action, knowing in turn essentially relates back to action as
a guide. Reflective intelligence is what constitutes action as free-
dom; it provides the will with its discrete objects and informs mo-
tives and intentions. Knowledge, then, functions in relation to will,
and decision is the channel of action. Knowledge is for life and
action. All forms of knowledge find their common reason for being in
practice (434). Given this perspective, it was natural for Blondel to
characterize his philosophy as a form of pragmatism, although it is
quite distinct from the American variety.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 51
When knowledge is considered as a discrete form of action in
contrast to doing or practice, the relation between knowing and action
in this sense is reciprocal. There is mutual influence between thought
and practice, but practice is always the basis.M[T]hought starts from
action to go to action" (277). On the one hand, knowledge illumines
action and acts as its guide. Speculative knowledge, indeed, objective
knowledge of any kind, is for action in the sense of doing and living
(427). But on the other hand, action is primary in the sense of always
being prior to knowledge and the goal to which it tends. For
speculative and indeed all knowledge follows the forward movement of
action. Thought does not construct its knowledge prior to practice;
knowledge itself is a form of action that synthesizes and tries to
capture and sum up life and experience. In short, thought follows
practice. Thus it is not possible to hold that one must wait for a
complete knowledge of anything before one can act. By a reductio ad
absurdum, such a view would stymie all action, since a complete
knowledge of anything is impossible. Ordinarily people act upon what
they do in fact know, and that knowledge is the assimilation of what
has been learned by reflection on the basis of action in the sense of
practice (430-433).
Blondel makes a significant distinction between a speculative
knowledge and what might be called "possessive" knowledge, which in
some respects appears to be similar to Newman's distinction between
notional and real assent but is really quite different from it. Spec-
ulative or notional knowledge resembles what Newman calls notional
apprehension and assent, but possessive knowledge is mediated by
action in the sense of practice. Action mediates and "contains the
real presence of what, without it, knowledge can simply represent,
but of what, with it and through it, is vivifying truth" (434). The
difference between merely objective knowledge and possessive knowledge
might be illustrated crudely by the example of the contrast between
one who has studied mechanical physics and knows all there is to know
about the automobile engine, and the knowledge of the mechanic. The
latter, through the practice of taking apart and putting together,
has a kind of symbiotic relationship to the object of the trade. The
difference, then, is not truth, but the kind of truth that is media-
52 HAIGHT
ted. Notional knowledge may indeed be objectively true; it may repre-
sent reality. But the difference between merely objective knowledge
and possessive knowledge is "all the difference that may separate
possession from privation" (441).
The idea of possessive knowledge leads to the relation between
knowledge and being and the mediational role of action. In brief,
action constitutes the being or the reality of the thing known within
the knowing subject. Action creates the reality of the object known
for the subject. Action fashions a real relationship of being between
the self and the object known. As Blondel puts it: "The objective
reality of beings is therefore tied to the action of a being who, in
seeing, makes what he sees be, and who, in willing, becomes himself
what he knows" (419). The discrete activities of knowing and willing
are tied to being through action in the concrete sense of practice.
Action in the sense of doing actualizes being. "The role of action,
then, is to develop being and to constitute it" (425).
The relation between action and God
The very point of BlondePs philosophy of action as it is articu-
lated in his first work is to define the relationship between human
action and God. The work is an extended rigorous phenomenology of
action, and a dialectical argument charting the expansive character of
human action towards an unlimited horizon which will only be satisfied
by God. The question that introduces the work concerns human destiny,
a question that cannot be resisted because it is raised by action
itself, and which will find its human resolution only in action. In a
sense, the thesis of the whole work is very similar to that expressed
by Augustine in his De libero arbitrio: "If you begin by wishing to
exist, and add a desire for fuller and fuller existence, you rise in
the scale, and are furnished for life that supremely is. ... If you
wish more and more to exist, you will draw near to him who exists
supremely."28 In other words, the dynamism of action is such that
from within itself it reaches out for absolute existence and hence an
28Augustine, On Free Will, in Augustine, Earlier Writings, trans, and ed.
by John H. S. Burleigh (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953), III, vii, 21;
p. 183.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 53
"object" that will bestow that upon it. In order to show that this is
the case, Blondel makes a key distinction between two aspects of
human willed action, a distinction which serves as the motor for the
whole argument.
The terms of this distinction are usually referred to as "the
willing will" and "the willed will." Beginning with the latter, on
the one hand it is obvious enough that willing is always a willing of
something. The phrase "the willed will" thus refers to the will in-
sofar as it is directed towards an object. In the text of the essay I
have referred to this category of Blondel as simply "free choice" or
a choice of a specific object. It is the willing of this or that, the
willing of something that is objective, and thus particular or
defined, and which consequently determines or specifies the will. The
willed will refers to specific acts of the will which are always
directed to a specific object.
On the other hand, one might ask why the will wills at all. And
this sort of question opens up another dimension of the will that
accounts for all willing. Beneath all its choices and decisions,
beneath every exercise of the will, one can find by analysis a fun-
damental desire that is constitutive of action itself in its most
fundamental sense. In the essay on Ignatian spirituality I have called
BlondePs "the willing will" "the dynamic of willing itself." This
desire most radically is a love of being or a desire to be that cannot
be denied, for its very denial in radical pessimism or nihilism, and
every effort to escape it by dilettantism or aestheticism, is based
on the very thing that is denied and implicitly affirms it. This
desire or love for being is not the same as the formal object of the
will as seen in Aquinas, which defines the object of the will as the
good, so that every act of the will implicitly affirms the good.
Rather, what is being affirmed here is much closer to the Plotinian-
Augustinian radical, active and dynamic desire that constitutes human
action itself and is the very source and structure of its being-as-
action.
Since many are familiar with the theological language of Karl
Rahner, it may be helpful to label these two aspects of the will with
terms that he applies to the cognitive dimension of the human spirit.
54 HAIGHT
What Rahner calls transcendental and categorical knowing applies in
almost exact parallel fashion to the distinction made by Blondel. Thus
the categorical will refers to human willing insofar as it is
concretely determined by a specific object, a willing of this or
that, which of course it always is and cannot not be. However, within
and beneath every act of the will is its transcendental dimension.
The transcendental will in Blondel shares the same two qualities
assigned to the cognitive human spirit by Rahner:29 It refers to a
universal a-priori structure of human existence as such. That is, it
does not simply refer to my subjective willing, but transcends what
is found in any individual to be postulated as an anthropological
structure, a constitutive dimension of the human as such. Andsecondly, it is transcendent in the sense that its dynamism reaches
out for that which is absolutely transcendent. The desire underlying
all willing is teleological, and it reaches out in a love for
permanent and infinite being in such a way that it will not be
satisfied until it rests secure in this absolute "object."
Given this distinction, one can easily grasp the overall struc-
ture of BlondeFs thesis in Action. The grand lines of the argument
are utterly simple even though the unfolding of it is tortuously
complex. A phenomenological analysis of human willed action reveals
that it is dynamically expansive, reaching out as it does in an ever
expanding field of objects: The categorical will reaches out into the
world, through the formation of family and society, in dedication to
country and humanity, and in the construction of morality, metaphys-
ics, and religion. The motive force of this unlimited categorical
willing is the transcendental will, and at every ascending or at
least broadened horizon of dedication, there is always a contradiction
between these two dimensions of the will. No finite object or range
of objects, especially the fabricated deities that merely ratify the
autonomous self-sufficiency of the human subject, can satisfy its
29 "We shall call transcendental experience the subjective, unthematic,
necessary and unfailing consciousness of the knowing subject that is co-present
in every spiritual act of knowledge, and the subject's openness to the
unlimited expanse of all possible reality." Karl Rahner, Foundations ofChristian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans, by William
V. Dych (New York: A Crossroad Book, The Seabury Press, 1978), p. 20.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 55
transcendental love for infinite being. Thus the internal and autono-
mous force and logic of human action itself demands an absolutely
transcendent other as its goal. Blondel the philosopher has demon-
strated in a secular philosophical atmosphere that a strictly immanent
dialectic of human action forces one to admit the philosophical neces-
sity of the religious question. But ultimately the solution to the
religious problem can only be found in action, by an option or decis-
ion that accepts and attaches itself to the Transcendent.30
In the light of his whole thesis, I wish now to underline four
aspects of the categorical will that are relevant for a discussion of
spirituality. The first point is dialectical and paradoxical. From one
point of view, one can say that one can complete the equation of our
categorical and transcendental wills with an act of faith. That is to
say, by the option or decision of faith in the transcendent God, one
has made a conscious choice which unites the categorical will with the
"object" of its transcendental desire. This is the view taken by
Blondel, as well as Fessard and Pousset, whose whole point is to show
that the two wills can be reconciled in the categorical option of
faith, or an election, that attaches itself to a revealing God. But
from another point of view, it must be said that the categorical will
is never really equal to the transcendent object of transcendental
willing. The two wills can never be equated in this world; our cate-
gorical will always falls short of the telos of the transcendental
will. With this aspect of the tension, I wish to stress the finitude
of human choices, actions, and commitments. Granted that the infinite
condescension of God's grace raises our will to infinite potentiality,
still, as Trent said, the problem is not God's but ours; we can never
be absolutely sure of our faith, our union with God, and our salva-
tion.31 Our categorical willing is always in a dialectical relation-
30Blondel also discusses, but on an a-priori level, what he called the
"supernatural," the conditions of a possible revelation, the meaning of
doctrines as principles of action, and the value of religious practices. All
of this was particularly disconcerting to the philosophy faculty of the Sorbonne.
31The issue at stake here is implicit in the debate over the nature of
our union with God in faith between Lutheran and Catholic theology that
unfolded during Ignatius's lifetime. In answer to the question of whether one
could be sure of his or her personal salvation, Luther answered Yes. The reason
56 HAIGHT
ship with our transcendent longing for God and God's will, even when
that transcendent desire has been made explicit by an act or attitude
of faith. All categorical willing falls short of its transcendent
object, even though that transcendent object is contained in it.32
Actually, a closer examination of the dynamics of human willing
and action will show that there are really three wills, or three
dimensions of the will, that come into play. Besides the transcenden-
tal eros of the will for being and its categorical exercise in rela-
tion to specific objects, one can distinguish a third dimension which
is often called one's fundamental option.33 Our fundamental option is
ultimately hidden from ourselves, for it consists in the sum total of
our categorical decisions. One's fundamental option is the interior
logic of all of one's action; it is the actual drift and direction of
our life that both lies beneath and is constituted by all the action
that we perform; it is our deepest faith. Its hidden character is
for his affirmative response is that he assumes an existential perspective of
subjectivity actually clinging to God in Christ. For Luther, this existential
union excluded doubt; the stress is on God's infallible grace. Trent in
contrast responded No. The reason for this is that the theologians writing the
Decree on Justification assume an objective point of view and notice the finite
character of the human option of faith and the temptations against it across
the span of human life; the stress is on the finitude and changeability of
human response. I would hold that both of these positions are tenable, andthat they should be held in such a way that each is in tension with the other.
For the position of Trent, see the Council of Trent's Decree on Justification,
chapter 9, and canon 13, in The Church Teaches (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.,
1955), pp. 235-236, 243. For the contrast between Luther and Catholic theology
on this point, see Otto H. Pesch, "Existential and Sapiential Theology—TheTheological Confrontation between Luther and Thomas Aquinas," in Jared Wicks,
ed., Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther (Chicago: Loyola University Press,
1970), pp. 66-67.
32 A comparison with transcendental and categorical knowledge of God will
illustrate the point being made here about human willing and action. No concep-
tual or linguistic form of knowledge of God can be equal to the reality of God.It is simply impossible and unthinkable that the human mind could encompass the
absolute and transcendent mystery of God. Yet within all our knowledge of God,God is really "known" through the transcending "ascent" of the mind to the
unlimited or infinite mystery that at the same time is present to it. These are
two dimensions of one act of faith-knowledge which interpenetrate and interact
with each other.
33The concept of a "fundamental option" is well known from the recent
tradition of Catholic moral theology. See Louis Monden, Sin, Liberty and Law,
trans, by Joseph Donceel (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965), pp. 30-33.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 57
immediately evident when one asks oneself what exactly the content of
one's deepest faith is. All people live by faith, for one cannot not
live by some commitment to an absolute ideal. But if one is asked
what exactly the object of one's faith is, one cannot be absolutely
sure, so deeply is this real option constituted in the logic of one's
whole life. The dynamics of religiously motivated life, then, can be
characterized in the following way: The categorical will is nurtured
by the "revealed" object of the transcendental will which is the
telos of human action; by its action the categorical will cumula-
tively fashions the self in the direction of its final goal.
Ultimately, it is the sum total of our acts of the will, in all
spheres of life, that fashions what our fundamental and then final
option will be. And that fundamental option in this world can at best
asymptotically approach the final commitment that a "face to face"
encounter would allow.
Secondly, in a characteristically obscure passage in Action on
the relation between action and being, Blondel suggests that for
things in this world to be really real, God must not only sustain
them in creation but must also be passive before their action (419).
Whatever Blondel's full intention might have been at this point, I
wish to develop the thought. Modern sensibility has underscored a
certain logical demand that the creativity of human freedom in this
world must have intrinsic value and reality. This conviction has
sharply affected some traditional concepts of the end-time and of
God. Thus in eschatology there is a new confidence that human actions
count, that the language of "building the kingdom of God" has on-
tological merit, and that one must affirm a "continuous" eschatology
in which what human beings do contributes to what lastingly is and
will be. And in the theology of God, one is much more free to speak
of a "suffering" God,34 of a God who is related, dependent on the
world, temporal, passive, and becoming,35 or at least of a "self-
34The idea of a "suffering God" has been made current by Jurgen Moltmann,
The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism ofChristian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1974).
35Speaking out of the context of process theology, Schubert M. Ogden, The
Reality of God and Other Essays, (New York: Haper and Row, 1966), especially
58 HAIGHT
limiting" God,36 in an effort to guarantee the internal conviction
that human freedom is real and its works do not in the end, or even
now, count for nothing. Thus the infinity and absoluteness of God is
not such that it contains completely in itself what God has created
human freedom to accomplish. In Rahner's language, God has created a
semiautonomous human freedom that can enter into a genuine dialogue
with God. In sum, God is passive before the categorical will of human
beings and patient now and in the end time of what we accomplish with
our action.
Thirdly, and in this light, we can establish in two fundamental
points the value of our categorical will and its finite action. On the
one hand, our human action through the finite choices of the cate-
gorical will constitutes our union with God. "It is here," writes
Blondel, "once again and especially, that the sovereign efficacious-
ness and the mediating power of action makes itself manifest. For, on
the one hand, it is through the channel of action that the revealed
truth penetrates deep into thought without losing anything of its
supernatural integrity; and, on the other hand, if believing thought,
as obscure as it remains amid the rays that faith fans out from its
inaccessible center, has any meaning and value, it is because it ends
up in action and finds in literal practice its commentary and its
living reality" (368). But the issue here is much more than simply
subjective appropriation. In the end, union with God is not a matter
of knowledge, not even religious experiential knowledge; it is a
matter of action. We are not dealing here with a moral union of two
wills, the will of God and our own, but a union of being in action. In
terms of knowledge, real union with God is effected when true but
privative knowledge of God and God's will passes to possessive know-
ledge that forges through action a unity of being. The union is a
unity of being in "theandric" action. In terms of grace, union with
God is effected in action when, as Blondel says appropriating the
dictum of Bernard of Clairvaux, our action and the impulse of God as
pp. 1-70.
36 This paradoxical notion is developed by Langdon Gilkey, Reaping the
Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation of History (New York: A Crossroad Book,
The Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 248-249, 279-281, 296, 307.
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 59
Spirit become one, "mixed together, not singly, simultaneously, not
successively, they act through every single step" (371)?1 In sum,
categorical action, and nothing less than that, constitutes the rela-
tion of any human being with God beeause it alone fashions a real
response to God's grace.
On the other hand, and fourthly, categorical action constitutes
the world and its relation to God. It is easy enough to realize today
that the world has become "self-conscious" with the evolution of the
human species, so that intentional human action now bends back upon
the very stuff out of which it emerged. In ever greater degrees, the
human race has taken on a real responsibility for the earth and itself
in it. This increasingly evident fact must influence our conception
of the reason for our existence. If one accepts the reality of human
freedom and its creativity, and concedes the passivity of God before
its action, one must also take the New Testament's view of stewardship
with much greater seriousness than in the past. According to this
view, the language current in liberation theology of "building the
kingdom of God" is no mere appendage to the Christian message. Outside
of Latin America this language is often considered a merely cultural
emphasis, at best a possible consequence of Christian faith, but
extrinsic to its kernel of union with God by grace and through faith.
In a Christian anthropology which finds its focus in action, the
notion of building the kingdom of God represents the very purpose of
creating and the teleology of the salvific grace that redeems. Cur-
rently our world is not a very hospitable place for more than half of
its inhabitants. And the instinctive response to this tragedy, a kind
of defense mechanism that we need lest the suffering of the world be
allowed to overwhelm us, is to take solace in the little difference
17The whole text, which Blondel cites in a footnote, is illuminating as
a classical expression of the doctrine of cooperative grace: "What was begunby grace alone, is completed by grace and free choice together, in such a waythat they contribute to each new achievement not singly but jointly, not by
turns, but simultaneously. It is not as if grace did one half of the work and
free choice the other; but each does the whole work, according to its ownpeculiar contribution. Grace does the whole work, and so does free choice—
with this one qualification: that whereas the whole is done in free choice, so
is the whole done of grace." Bernard of Clairvaux, Treatises III: On Grace and
Free Choice, trans, by Daniel O'Donovan, intro. by Bernard McGinn (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian Publications Inc., 1977), XIV, 47; p. 106.
60 HAIGHT
that our personal action can make in redress. But in the anthropology
presented here all action makes a difference, and according to Blondel
an eternal difference, for once posited it cannot be undone. All
human action shapes the world and makes it different. The ultimate
objective value of categorical human action is that it reworks the
world and re-presents it to God.
Let me summarize the salient points of the anthropological foun-
dations that have been presented here. Our standpoint is an existen-
tial view of human existence in which the human person appears dynam-
ically as action. The human person is conscious, semiautonomous, and
self-directing free action. The telos of the action that we are is
God, but that end is not simply outside us; it is an active intention
and a moving force that constitutes human existence itself and oper-
ates within as a driving love for absolute Being. The way to that
goal can only be negotiated by action through the categorical will,
by the concrete options that we make and the actions we perform in
this world. The first value of categorical action in the sense of the
concrete actions of our daily life, when seen from a subjective and
personal point of view, lies in their mediational role of constituting
our relation to God, the ultimate end of our existence. But this
existentialism is no individualism; human action is always coaction
so that we, our world, and other human beings are constituted in
solidarity. Moreover, despite God's agency in creating, sustaining in
existence and influence through the gracious Spirit, God remains
patient to human action in the fashioning of God's own will in the
world. The second value of action, then, lies in its being the medium
of the first principle and foundation of creating itself: Human beings
are created to build a world of love through their action in the
world.
In conclusion, Blondel presents us with a modern Christian phil-
osophy of action. Like Rahner's transcendental analysis it is con-
ceived in personalist categories. But also like Rahner's thought it at
the same time remains entirely open to social categories of thought
and even demands them. Moreover it explicitly includes a social con-
ception of human existence where action is always action in and upon
the world while at the same time influenced by the world. Human exis-
FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES 61
tence is depicted as autonomous, as radically in solidarity with
others in society, and as fashioned by the objective patterns of
human behavior that make up social institutions. Although liberation
theologians have noted the appropriateness of BlondePs categories to
liberation theology and spirituality, they have not developed this
correlation. That correlation rests in an anthropological groundwork
for a spirituality of praxis. In Blondelian language, action in the
world that contributes to building liberating social structures is
action that really contributes to the kingdom of God and at the same
time unites the practitioner to God in a real relationship of posses-
sive love.
Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits
Past Issues
(For prices, see inside back cover.)
1/1 Sheets, Profile of the Contemporary Jesuit (Sept. 1969).
1/2 Ganss, Authentic Spiritual Exercises: History and Terminology (Nov. 1969).
2/1 Burke, Institution and Person (Feb. 1970).
2/2 Futrell, Ignatian Discernment (Apr. 1970).
2/3 Lonergan, Response of the Jesuit as Priest and Apostle (Sept. 1970).
3/1 Wright, Grace of Our Founder and the Grace of Our Vocation (Feb. 1971).
3/2 O'Flaherty, Some Reflections on Jesuit Commitment (Apr. 1971).
3/3 Clarke, Jesuit Commitment-Fraternal Covenant? Haughey, Another
Perspective on Religious Commitment (Jun. 1971). Out of print.
3/4 Toner, A Method for Communal Discernment of God's Will (Sept. 1971).
3/5 Sheets, Toward a Theology of the Religious Life (Nov. 1971).
4/1 Knight, St. Ignatius' Ideal of Poverty (Jan. 1972).
4/2 Two Discussions: I. Spiritual Direction, II. Leadersltip and Authority
(Mar. 1972).
4/3 Orsy, Some Questions about the Purpose and Scope of the General
Congregation (Jun. 1972).
4/4 Ganss, Wright, O'Malley, O'Donovan, Dulles, On Continuity and Change:
A Symposium (Oct. 1972).
4/5 Futrell, Communal Discernment: Reflections on Experience (Nov. 1972).
5/1-2 O'Flaherty, Renewal: Call and Response (Jan.-Mar. 1973).
5/3 Arrupe, McNaspy, The Place of Art in Jesuit Life (Apr. 1973).
5/4 Haughey, The Pentecostal Thing and Jesuits (Jun. 1973).
5/5 Orsy, Toward a Theological Evaluation of Communal Discernment (Oct. 1973).
6/1-2 Padberg, The General Congregations of the Society of Jesus: A Brief
Survey of Their History (Jan.-Mar 1973).
6/3 Knight, Joy and Judgment in Religious Obedience (Apr. 1974).
6/4 Toner, The Deliberation That Started the Jesuits (Jun. 1974).
6/5 Schmitt, The Christ-Experience and Relationship Fostered in the Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola (Oct. 1974).
7/1 Wright, Ganss, Orsy, On Thinking with the Church Today (Jan. 1975).
7/2 Ganss, Christian Life Communities from the Sodalities (Mar. 1975).
7/3 Connolly, Contemporary Spiritual Direction: Scope and Principles (Jun. 1975).
7/4 Clarke, Ignatian Spirituality and Societal Consciousness; Orsy, Faith andJustice: Some Reflections (Sept. 1975). Out of print.
7/5 Buckley, The Confirmation of a Promise; Padberg, Continuity and Change in
General Congregation XXXII (Nov. 1975).
8/1 O'Neill, Acatamiento: Ignatian Reverence (Jan. 1976).
8/2-3 De la Costa, Sheridan, and others, On Becoming Poor: A Symposium on
Evangelical Poverty (Mar.-May 1976).
8/4 Fancy, Jesuit Community: Community of Prayer (Oct. 1976).
8/5 Buckley, Jesuit Priesthood: Its Meaning and Commitments (Dec. 1976)
9/1-2 Becker, Changes in U.S. Jesuit Membership, 1958-75; Others, Reactions
and Explanations (Jan-Mar. 1977).
9/3 Harvanek, The Reluctance to Admit Sin (May 1977).
9/4 Connolly, Land, Jesuit Spiritualities and the Struggle for Social Justice
(Sept. 1977)
9/5 Gill, A Jesuit's Account of Conscience (Nov. 1977).
10/1 Kammer, "Burn-Out"-Dilemma for the Jesuit Social Activist (Jan. 1978).
10/2-3 Barry, Birmingham, Connolly, Fahey, Finn, Gill, Affectivity and Sexuality
(Mar.-May 1978). Out of print.
10/4 Harvanek, Status of Obedience in the Society of Jesus; Others, Reactions to
Connolly-Land (Sept. 1978).
10/5 Padberg, Personal Experience and the Spiritual Exercises: The Example
of Saint Ignatius (Nov. 1978).
11/1 Clancy, Feeling Bad about Feeling Good (Jan. 1979).
11/2 Maruca, Our Personal Witness as Power to Evangelize Culture (Mar. 1979).
11/3 Klein, American Jesuits and the Liturgy (May 1979).
11/4 Buckley, Mission in Companions/up (Sept. 1979). Out of print.
11/5 Conwell, The Kamikaze Factor: Choosing Jesuit Ministries (Nov. 1979).
12/1 Clancy, Veteran Witnesses: Their Experiences of Jesuit Life (Jan. 1980). Outof print.
12/2 Henriot, Appleyard, Klein, Living Together in Mission: A Symposium onSmall Apostolic Communities (Mar. 1980).
12/3 Conwell, Living and Dying in the Society of Jesus (May 1980).
12/4-5 Schineller, Newer Approaches to Christology and Their Use in the Spiritual
Exercises (Sept.-Nov. 1980).
12/1 Peter, Alcoholism in Jesuit Life (Jan. 1981).
13/2 Begheyn, A Bibliography on St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises (Mar. 1981).
13/3 Ganss, Towards Understanding the Jesuit Brothers' Vocation (May 1981).
13/4 Reites, St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Jews (Sept. 1981).
13/5 O'Brien, The Jesuits and Catholic Higher Education (Nov. 1981). Out of
print.
14/1 O'Malley, The Jesuits, St. Ignatius and the Counter Reformation (Jan. 1982).
14/2 Dulles, St. Ignatius and Jesuit Theological Tradition (Mar. 1982).
14/3 Robb, Com'ersion as a Human Experience (May 1982).
14/4 Gray, An Experience in Ignatian Government (Sept. 1982).
14/5 Ivern, The Future of Faith and Justice: Review of Decree Four (Nov. 1982).
15/1 O'Malley, The Fourth Vow in Its Ignatian Context (Jan. 1983).
15/2 Sullivan and Faricy, On Making tlie Spiritual Exercises for Renewal of Jesuit
Cliarisms (Mar. 1983).
15/3-4 Padberg, The Society True to Itself: A Brief History of the 32nd General
Congregation of the Society of Jesus (May-Sept. 1983).
15/5-16/1 Tetlow, Jesuits' Mission in Higher Education (Nov. 1983-Jan. 1984).
16/2 O'Malley, To Travel to Any Part of the World: Jeronimo Nadal and the Jesuit
Vocation (Mar. 1984).
16/3 O'Hanlon, Integration of Christian Practices: A Western Christian Looks East
(May 1984).
16/4 Carlson, "A Faith Lived Out of Doors": Ongoing Formation (Sept. 1984).
16/5 Kinerk, Eliciting Great Desires: Their Place in the Spirituality of tlie
Society of Jesus (Nov. 1984).
17/1 Spohn, St. Paul on Apostolic Celibacy and the Body of Christ (Jan. 1985).
17/2 Daley, "In Ten Thousand Places": Christian Universality and the Jesuit
Mission (Mar. 1985).
17/3 Tetlow, Dialogue on the Sexual Maturing of Celibates (May 1985).
17/4 Spohn, Coleman, Clarke, Henriot, Jesuits and Peacemaking (Sept. 1985).
17/5 Kinerk, When Jesuits Pray: A Perspective on the Prayer of Apostolic Persons
(Nov. 1985).
18/1 Gelpi, The Converting Jesuit (Jan. 1986).
18/2 Beirne, Compass and Catalyst: The Ministry of Administration. (Mar. 1986).
18/3 McCormick, Bishops as Teachers and Jesuits as Listeners (May 1986).
18/4 McDermott, With Him, In Him: Graces of the Spiritual Exercises (Sept. 1986).
18/5 Tetlow, The Transformation of Jesuit Poverty (Nov. 1986).
19/1 Staudenmaier, United States Technology and Adult Commitment (Jan. 1987).
19/2 Appleyard, Languages We Use: Talking about Religious Experience (Mar. 1987).
19/3 Harmless and Gelpi, Priesthood Today and the Jesuit Vocation (May 1987).
19/4 Haight, Foundational Issues in Jesuit Spirituality (Sept. 1987).
David M. Stanley, S.J.
"I ENCOUNTERED GOD!"THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES WITH THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN*
$ 11.00 sewn paper ISBN -71-8
$ 14.00 clothbound ISBN -72-6 342 pages
Both St. John and St. Ignatius could exclaim: "I encountered God!" Both,
too, have left us a record of their spiritual experiences from which sprang their
outlooks on God and humankind: the Fourth Gospel and the Spiritual Exer-
cises.
This book reveals the similarity and parallels in their outlooks on the
spiritual life.
It presents up-to-date biblical theology oriented toward the heart, in order
to open the way to affective prayer and contemplation.
In an APPENDIX on "A Suggested Approach to Lectio Divina, " Stanley
gives much help toward practice of this age-old "prayerful reading of Scrip-
ture."
This is predominantly a book for deepening one's spiritual life—especially
by basing it more firmly on a better understanding of Scripture.
It is particularly useful for retreat directors or exercitants who have had ex-
perience with St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises.
But for others too, a prayful reading of it will bring welcome benefits, in-
cluding many of those ordinarily expected from an Ignatian retreat.
"The spirit of John consists totally in love and in bringing others to love."
Love is similarly the goal of Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises.
THE AUTHORFather David M. Stanley, S.J., is professor of New Testament Studies at
Regis College, Toronto School of Theology. He has published seven books
and numerous articles on Scriptural topics, including A Modern Scriptural
Approach to the Spiritual Exercises, published in 1967 and still in demand in
1986.
* For sale from us only in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
David M. Stanley, S.J. NEWLY REPRINTED
A MODERN SCRIPTURAL APPROACHTO THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
5th printing, 1986
$ 6.95 ISBN -07-6 374 pages, bibliography, index
This book, first printed in 1967, was long in steady demand. After four
printings, the stock was exhausted in 1983. Since then, however, requests for it
have steadily continued. Hence has arisen this fifth printing.
Stanley here presents biblical and doctrinal foundations for prayer, in the
order of the chief contemplations in St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises.
His book contains "a use of Scripture in such a way that the spirituality
flows immediately and smoothly from the biblical interpretation. This is
genuine biblical spirituality."
The substance of the book was originally given by Stanley as a retreat to a
group of Jesuit theological students. Later he revised his talks extensively. The
resulting book is a concrete example of one manner in which the twentieth cen-
tury achievements of biblical scholarship may be used in conducting or making
the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.
Joseph de Guibert, S.J. NEWLY REPRINTED
THE JESUITS: THEIR SPIRITUAL DOCTRINE AND PRACTICE
Translated by W. J. Young, S.J.
$ 15.00 paper ISBN -09-2 717 pages, bibliography, index
Although the French original appeared in 1953 and the English in 1964, this
is still the most scholarly and comprehensive book on the topic. It shows in
detail the development of the Ignatian heritage from 1521 on.
PART I: St. Ignatius, 1491-1556, his personal interior life.
PART II: Developing the spiritual heritage, 1556 onward.
PART III: Some general aspects.
Candido de Dalmases, S.J. RECENT
IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, FOUNDER OF THE JESUITS*
His Life and Work
Translated by Jerome Aixala, S.J.
$ 14.00 sewn paper ISBN -58-0
$ 16.00 clothbound ISBN -59-9 384 pages, bibliography, index
This is an updated and authoritative life of the saint who has been extra-
ordinarily influential on subsequent history.
Its author has spent over forty years in the Jesuit Historical Institute, Rome,
preparing critical editions of the primary sources about Ignatius.
Consequently his biography is accurate and reliable, with a comprehensive
perspective which comes from expertise. Thoroughly documented and embo-
dying the latest research, it is also warm and interesting. It has objectivity and
ecumenical fairness.
The first life of Ignatius was a classic, published in 1572 by his intimate com-
panion Ribadeneira. But later lives for two centuries added embellishments or
exaggerations according to literary or hagiographical customs of their times.
They made Ignatius into a colossal figure not very human or winning. Some
enemies, too, wildly distorted or defamed him. In the 1800s efforts began at
more scientific lives; but most of the primary sources, still only in handwritten
manuscript, were practically unavailable.
From 1894 onward the enormous work of winnowing the wheat from the
chaff was greatly furthered through the publication of critical editions of these
primary sources by the Jesuit Historical Institute, first in Madrid and since
1929 in Rome. Dalmases has taken a prime part in this editing.
In the present volume he has synthesized his vast knowledge into a brief,
well-rounded whole. Scholarly reviews of the Spanish original of this book
have pointed out its value to experts and general readers alike.
This book is available in Spanish, English, French, German, and Italian.
THE AUTHORAs a young Jesuit priest, Candido de Dalmases became a member of the Jesuit Historical In-
stitute in Rome in 1938, where he is still active. His chief work soon became the editing of critical
editions of primary sources about St. Ignatius—notably the four volumes of Fontes narrativi de
Saneto Ignatio (1943-1965), Exercitia Spiritualia: Textus (1969), and Fontes Documentales (1977).
He has also published many other books and articles.
* For sale from us only in the Americas, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
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